NEW DELHI: Indian police are investigating whether a group of occultists beheaded a 55-year-old man in the country’s east as a sacrifice to the gods for a better harvest, an officer said on Tuesday.

The decapitated body of Thepa Kharia, an unemployed man, was found inside his house on Sunday in a remote tribal village of mainly farmers in the impoverished state of Jharkhand.

Kharia’s brother has told police a group of occultists broke into the house and cut off Kharia’s head for burial in a field as part of a local ritual intended to increase crop yields and improve rainfall.

“The family says the occultists killed him for the ritual. His head is still missing,” Ajay Kumar Thakur, the officer investigating the killing in Gumla district, said.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2015

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