Baripada: Notwithstanding the spread of education, belief in superstition has not gone out of the minds of people in some pockets of tribal-dominated Mayurbhanj district. The district is also infamous for witchcraft and sorcery-related murders that have been happening at regular intervals.
In such a case of superstition, a girl student has not gone to school for over eight months in Ward 15 of Baripada municipality. Well-known child artiste and President Award winner Animesh Ghosh has appealed on the social media to bail the girl student out of the situation.
Reports said the girl is in Class VII. Her family members said an elderly person had thrown some articles into their house through a window January 18, 2018. The girl had noticed the articles and since then some strange things are reported to have been happening to her.
“Scratch and bite marks automatically appear on my hands. Sometimes, I feel an unseen power beating me. At other times, spit is found on my hands. When I am alone in a room, stones are hurled from nowhere,” the girl claimed.
Narrating a few other incidents, she said, “One day when I was going to pick up bus for school, fire caught my uniform all of a sudden. When I open books to read, pages automatically get torn apart.”
Her families members are living in utter panic while the girl has not gone to school for the last eight months. However, such strange things do not happen to her other family members.
Another strange thing she claims is that when she stands at a place for some time, things keep falling on her. Kith and kin of the girl also believe that it was some unseen power that makes it happen to her. On the advice of the family and well wishers, the family has spent lakhs of rupees on doing a number of pujas and rituals to ward off the ‘evil spirit’, but in vain.
The girl’s father is desperate to get some help from the administration and others to get the family out of such a hellish situation.
Animesh observed that if the girl is somehow helped and convinced to go to school safely, then things can become easier for her.
PNN