Prevention of witch practices bill in cold storage

Even while the incidents of witch-hunting continue to haunt the women of this desert state, the state government is yet to make a move on the Rajasthan Prevention of Witch (Dain) Practices Bill, which was drafted and submitted by Rajasthan State Women's Commission in the year 2005.
According to the draft Bill, if any person or community intentionally or inadvertently conspires or instigates identification of a woman as a witch leading to her mental and physical torture and humiliation, it would be considered a criminal offence.
Member secretary of state's women's commission, Pratibha Srivastava told TOI that the Bill advocated severe punishment for the guilty. In a series of meetings, which were conducted under the leadership of Tara Bhandari, chairperson of state's women commission, it was decided that the matter would be put before the National Commission for Women as witch-hunting cases are not restricted to Rajasthan but prevalent in other states too.
"In many parts of the state, women are branded as witch if they exhibit abnormal behaviour and are also ill-treated by the society, which results in torture, leading to suicide. The Bill was drafted to prevent such inhuman practice," said another official. "If a woman commits suicide after being called a witch, then the accused will be given an imprisonment for 10 years," she said and added that the guilty could also be fined along with punishment.
Kavita Srivastava, national secretary, People's Union for Civil Liberties said that the draft Bill was lying with the state government for over two years now, which reflected that atrocities on women in the name of witch-hunting is low priority issue for them.
She also said that only a few states including Bihar and Jharkhand have a law against witch-hunting but in Rajasthan, where witch-hunting incidents are common, there is no law under which the police can book persons, accused of witch-hunting. As of now, the cases of witch-hunting are registered under Section 323, which is confined to manhandling and the maximum penalty of one year jail term and Rs 1,000 fine.
Regarding number of cases, Srivastava said that there is no exact estimate about the deaths due to witch-hunting because most of the cases go unreported, only those cases which came to their knowledge were taken up by them. She also said that the member of the commission have been holding various programmes in the rural areas to make the people aware that witch-hunting is a crime.