A man in India’s Jharkhand is being held for assaulting his 80-year-old mother on suspicion of witchcraft.

50-year-old Mahendra Yadav reportedly gouged his elderly mother’s eyes with a knife before slitting her throat, police said.

According to the police, the shocking incident occurred on Saturday, Sept.25 at a home in the Jamkhokro village of Giridih district.

Police officers were dispatched to the home after villagers alerted them of the assault.

A preliminary investigation revealed that Yadav was suspicious that his mother, Saro Devi was practicing witchcraft.

On Saturday, the mother-son duo got into a heated argument which eventually escalated to the shocking assault.

During the argument, Yadav grabbed a kitchen knife and reportedly gouged his mother’s eyes then slit her throat.

The woman’s cries for help alerted the villagers who rushed to the home and held the accused.

The elderly victim was rushed to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Meanwhile, the angry villagers thrashed the suspect and tied him to a tree before alerting the police.

Yadav has been taken into police custody, Santosh Kumar Mandal, the officer in charge of Deori police station told the Times of India.

During an interrogation, Yadav told the investigators that his mother had been practicing witchcraft to harm others, which he strongly disapproved of.

the charges imposed on him were unclear at the time of this writing.

Villagers told the local media that Yadav had vandalized several things at Bhagwati temple in the village before attacking his mother.

"The accused is a laborer by profession and is married," said a villager.

Devi is currently undergoing treatment at the Sadar hospital for her grievous injuries. No updates were available about her current condition.

In a similar but unrelated incident, a terrified Las Vegas mother shot her boyfriend after he threw her five-year-old daughter, whom he called a ‘demon’, off an apartment balcony on Sept.12.

Following the incident, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police arrested 32-year-old Jarick Willis, on suspicion of attempted murder and child abuse.

According to the arrest report, the suspect had tried to warn the mother that her daughter "had bad entities" in her before throwing the child off a third-floor balcony.

The mother told the investigators that she believed her boyfriend had killed her daughter and that she feared she was going to be next.

She said she got a gun from her purse and confronted Willis before they got into an altercation. It is believed that he lunged at her so she fired her gun.

In an escape attempt, Willis jumped off the balcony but was later located by police, bleeding from a gunshot wound. He was later arrested in hospital.

The five-year-old girl remained in intensive care but was reported to be in stable condition.

Witchcraft
A 17-year-old boy reportedly killed both his parents as a sacrifice to cure his mentally-ill elder brother in Chhattisgarh, India. This is a representational image. Pixabay.

© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.