Going All the Way: From Village to Supreme Court for a Witch-Killing in Central India

In 1995, in a central Indian village, Kulwantin Bai Nishad was accused and murdered as a witch. Public, political, and administrative indignation died away once her case entered the judicial system based on the assumption that justice would be meted out to the perpetrators. The prosecution for Kulwantin Bai's murder is unique in that it made its way through all three tiers of the legal system to the Supreme Court in 2017. The chapter looks at the existing laws and legal processes applied by tracing the agonizing slowness and setbacks of her case through the courts. In a thought experiment, this chapter speculates how her case might have fared had it occurred after the enactment of the Chhattisgarh Witchcraft Atrocities Prevention Act (2005). Here, the nebulous concepts of social and legal justice for women accused of being witches are explored by examining the impact of the Act on the legal apparatus and processes.