Christian boy lynched on suspicion of Black Magic
2020-06-04
Samaru Madkami, a 14-year-old boy was murdered by a mob in Kenduguda, a village in the eastern Indian state’s Malkangiri district of Odhisa. The attackers had tried to kidnap three Christians, but two of them, who were physically strong, managed to escape the mob, leaving Madkami, a seventh grader, to their mercy. Madkami was the son of Unga Madkami, who serves in the Bethel House Church. Samaru had lost his mother when he was an infant. On June 5, Pastor Pusuru went to the Malkangiri Police Station to lodge a complaint about the teen. The station in charge dispatched three police vehicles to the village. However, the suspects disappeared by the time the police arrived. The police however managed to arrest around a dozen suspects by around 9 PM on June 5. The attackers then narrated how they chopped the boy’s body into pieces and buried it before fleeing the scene. The boy and his father had become Christians three years ago. Since then, they started facing harassment from their neighbors and radicals from outside. Around 11 am on June 3, some villagers picked the boy telling him that he had to attend a meeting in a nearby forest. The gang returned armed with arms at midnight to pick up the father, but he managed to escape and went to the police station to make a complaint. The boy’s family, church members and the pastor now await the magistrate’s orders to exhume the body.
