Cuttack, May 17: Orissa High Court has directed the state government to bring in legislation to tackle witch-hunting.

Laying down guidelines to fight the social evil, the court asked the administration to prosecute “tantrics” and “witch doctors”, who claim to possess “spiritual and magical powers”, under provisions of the Indian Penal Code.

“The Odisha government shall introduce an appropriate bill in the legislature within one year,” the court directed, while providing guidelines to be “strictly observed by the authorities till a suitable legislation is passed”.

The division bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice S.K. Mishra issued the order while disposing of two public interest litigations (PILs).

Activist Sashiprava Bindhani and secretary of Odisha Rationalist Society Debendra Sutar had filed two separate PILs seeking enactment of a law and issuing of guidelines by the Odisha government to curb the rising incidents of atrocities on women on charges of being witches or practicing witchcraft.

Citing report published in a vernacular daily, Sutar had alleged: “As many as 286 persons have been murdered in the name of witchcraft in the last five years, which is more than the number of deaths caused by Naxal activities.”

Bindhani alleged that the Odisha government was blind to the problem of witchcraft while neighbouring states such as Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, where such superstitions have been prevalent, have enacted strong laws to check the social evil.

“The division bench had reserved judgment after closing analogous hearing on the two PILs. The judgment was made public today,” Odisha Rationalist Society counsel Khirod Rout told The Telegraph.

While providing the guidelines, the court further directed the authorities to take “preventive steps” to check witch-hunting. As preventive steps, the high court prescribed that public awareness programmes should be launched at the gram panchayat level to eradicate the superstition of witchcraft, health camps should be organised at village level to detect cases of the psychologically disordered, which may lead to a false acquisition being possessed or being a witch, to avoid the witnesses turning hostile in cases involving allegations of witch-hunting, the investigating agency should take steps to get the statement of the witnesses recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

The PILs alleged that women were being ostracised for being “witches” and tortured. In the absence of law against such criminal activity, more and more people were falling victim to this and the culprits were going unpunished.

The Odisha government recently ordered a judicial probe into the death of two persons after police opened fire to disperse a mob which prevented them from rescuing four persons, including a woman, forcibly detained and subjected to inhuman treatment after being accused of practising witchcraft.

The incident occurred at Phasipada in Ganjam district on April 1. The villagers had tonsured the four and pulled out their teeth.