AMN / WEB DESK
The Kerala couple and an ‘occultist’ arrested on charges of murdering two women after performing an occult ritual over a four-month period allegedly told the police that they chopped the body of one of the two women into 56 pieces, cooked some pieces and ate it, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. The three were remanded in judicial custody by a Pathanamthitta court.
Two women in Kerala were allegedly abducted, beheaded and buried as part of a suspected ‘witchcraft ritual’ to gain financial prosperity at Elanthoor village in Pathanamthitta district, the police said on Tuesday, adding that one person has been arrested in the case while two others are in custody.
While the police took Bhagaval Singh, a traditional healer who used to attend to patients at his home, and his wife Laila, into custody from Elanthoor, a person named Shafi alias Rasheed from Perumbavoor was arrested.
Kochi police commissioner CH Nagaraju said the victims were killed in the “most brutal way” by Mohd Shafi, who took sadistic pleasure to torture the victims, and brutalised the two women before they were beheaded. “He is basically a hardened criminal… a psychopath,” Nagaraju told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday.
Mohd Shafi and a Kerala couple, Bhagaval Singh and his wife, Laila, were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the murder of two women in a span of four months in Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta which later unfolded the shocking tale of greed and superstition. Both victims in their fifties, Padma and Roselin, were lottery vendors and reportedly trapped by promising financial benefits.
As the initial details of the case emerged on Tuesday, the dark grisly details of a couple agreeing to human sacrifice in India’s most literate state, shocked people. Abducting and killing people for wealth and superstitious beliefs is a crime beyond imagination in a state such as Kerala, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said.
Main Accused A “Pervert”, “Delighted In Cruelty”
The main accused in the murder and mutilation of two women in a case of “human sacrifice” in Kerala was a man who trawled social media for women and lured them to the house of the killer couple.
Muhammad Shafi, a 52-year-old school dropout, was the “agent” who supplied the two women to the massage therapist couple, Bhagaval Singh and his wife Laila. Shafi was out on bail in a 2020 case involving the sexual assault of a 75-year-old woman.
Shafi found the victims Roselin and Padma on Facebook and allegedly drew them to the couple’s house in Pathanamthitta. He had done so with other women in the past, the police said.
Shafi allegedly promised the women money for acting in a pornographic film. At the same time, he “advised” Bhagaval Singh and Laila to carry out a human sacrifice to end their financial troubles, the police said.
Roselin disappeared in June and Padma in September. They both sold lottery tickets in Ernakulam.
Padma was strangled, beheaded, and cut into 56 pieces by Shafi, the police said. The remains were kept in a bucket.
Roselin was strangled allegedly by Laila, and her breasts were cut off.
“Shafi committed acts of sexual perversion on the women. He supplied women for sacrifice and cannibalism to clients,” said Kochi Police Chief CH Nagaraju.
One of the women was tortured with a knife, the investigations indicate. “It seems like human flesh was consumed,” said Mr Nagaraju.
Shafi was “addicted to sexual perversion, delighted in cruelty, and was a psychopath”, according to him.
“We’re investigating whether there are more accused and if more such cases happened.”