Child In Nepal Lured To Temple For Human Sacrifice — Jivan Kohar Killed To Rid Man Of Evil Spirits

Last week, a little boy was lured by his neighbors to a temple in Nepal, where he was nearly decapitated in a religious ritual. The purpose: A human sacrifice to save a sick young man.

In an isolated district in Nepal, close the border with India and populated with people who are among the country’s poorest and most uneducated, Kodai Chamar’s 18-year-old son Bijay fell ill, The New York Times reported.

To save his son’s life, a local shaman suggested human sacrifice. Police superintendent Nal Prasad Upadhyaya told CNN that some people in Nepal believe shamans can cure the sick with magic and spiritual powers.

Such rituals with animals are common among Nepal’s majority Hindu population.

“People mainly from remote parts of the country have superstitious beliefs,” said Inspector Jagat Bhandu Pokharel. “This kind of human sacrifice” is rare, and he’d never seen a case like this one.

On Tuesday last week, Jivan Kohar, only 10 — about the age of a third-grader — went missing. That same day, Kodai gathered villagers to say his son was sick and possessed by evil spirits, and he would need a human sacrifice to be cured.

“Nobody took him seriously,” said Ram Baran Kohar, Jivan’s paternal grandfather.

Boy slaughtered ‘as human sacrifice’ http://t.co/TdjL7pyxFc pic.twitter.com/CkpMpQwkSu

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When Jivan’s family learned he was missing Tuesday — and of the gathering earlier that day — they confronted the family.

In the story Kodai told Nepal’s district police, he and neighbors found little Jivan playing with his friends and lured him away with biscuits and roughly 50 cents in rupees. The Times said the human sacrifice took place at the man’s home while CNN reported it was performed at a temple on the village’s outskirts and the boy taken to a field.

In that field, the child was held down, and another man slit his throat with a sickle. The Times reported that Chamar confessed to killing the boy himself, and his head was nearly severed from his body.

He was found three days later in a bush on the banks of a river, Sky News added.

Now, 11 people have been arrested in connection with the human sacrifice, among them the shaman, Ganga Chamar. He is not related. The ill son, Bijay, has also been arrested, as well as family members. Five have confessed.

As for the little boy’s mother, she is reportedly ill and unable even to speak, an uncle, Lal Bahadur Kohar, told the Times.

“They had never imagined this kind of madness,” Kohar said.

[Photo Courtesy Twitter]