Indian couple burnt [burnt to death ] for 'black magic'

news.com.au ^ | 5-3-2007 | staff writer

[bedolido]

AN elderly Indian husband and wife were burnt to death after villagers accused them of practising black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire.

“The aged couple died screaming for help,” police superintendent P V KuMarch said.

Sayanna, 70, and his 61-year-old wife, Pochamma, were set ablaze after being doused with kerosene.

Both were farm labourers near the southern city of Hyderabad who also practised traditional medicine.

Police have arrested six villagers for the incident.

[HarmlessLovableFuzzball]

Let this be a lesson. If you want to perform magic, do it only in front of an appreciative audience.

[Integrityrocks]

Its beyond hard to believe in our day and age this stuff still happens. Tragic

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Why? People want scapegoats. They are unable to deal with the fact that half of the bad things that happen are their own fault and another forty nine percent is pure chance. Only one percent is someone else's fault.

That part of human nature never seems to change.

[bamahead]

Our economy is growing more and more intertwined with India’s every day, mostly with IT and call center outsourcing. Yet there is a *huge* cultural gap between our two societies.

I don’t see how it will be bridged any time soon because the beliefs and social structures are in many cases, so much different (ie: Richard Gere’s persecution for a “kiss”).

It’s sort of eerie to think that these folks we are starting to do close business with, still have all these old social taboos and odd beliefs.

A rebellious cultural oddity like this, on a much grander scale, might come back to bite us one day. ie: the whole country’s workforce goes on some kind of religious strike or something else weird like that. Who knows.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Asia pinglist.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Richard Gere did look as though he was a lewd, old creep, however. He wouldn't have been put into jail if it had happened between Americans in the United States, but it was overboard and more than a little uncouth.

[livius]

India still has a peasant culture, which has disappeared in the West (but not that long ago). Even leaving aside Hinduism, which is a bit like Roman religion before Christianity and has features that are waiting for conversion, India has a large mass of people who are living in centuries far removed from our own in terms of education, technology and world view.

Most of these folks are not the ones we deal with, though, and I think it’s more a problem for Indians than for their trading partners.

[Eclectica]

There is a Hyderabad in Pakistan, as well as India—would make more sense.

[GATOR NAVY]

I think Paul Harvey says it's not "one world".

[arderkrag]

I thought liberals stopped burning people after Salem.