Police have reported the arrest of five individuals, two of whom are from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, for their alleged involvement in a human sacrifice case at the Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati. The incident is said to have occurred a few days before the Ambubachi Mela about four years ago in 2019, with the victim being beheaded.
Guwahati Police Commissioner Diganta Barah shared chilling details of the incident, stating that the body of a 64-year-old woman was discovered beheaded and covered with a blanket on the staircase of the Durga Mandir within the Kamakhya Temple precincts on June 19, 2019. The victim was reportedly killed only hours before her body was discovered.
Following the incident, a case was registered at Jalukbari police station in the city on a suo moto basis, and an investigation was launched. However, the initial progress of the investigation was hampered by a lack of clues.
It was later found that the woman had come from West Bengal along with a sadhu and two other women to attend the annual Ambubachi mela and had gone missing since then, Barah said.
Kamakhya Temple is a Shakti Peeth and is one of the oldest and most revered centres of Tantrik practices. The Ambubachi mela is held in the temple every year.
The body was identified over a month later by her son, a resident of Bengal’s Hooghly district. He came to Jalukbari police station after coming to know of the finding of the body through media reports. He identified his mother based on clothes on the body and tattoos, Borah said.
The case was recently reviewed and a special team of Assam Police was entrusted to carry out further investigation.
The team analysed the technical pieces of evidence collected earlier and based on them went to Coochbehar in West Bengal and recovered the victim’s mobile handset, clothes and Aadhaar card from the house of a person.
On being interrogated, the person said that the bag with these objects was left in his house reportedly by a sadhu named Mata Prasad Pandey who used to visit the area for several years during June and July.
Further investigation led to the arrest of Pandey alias Mateswari Giri from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh on March 25, 2023. After questioning him three others were arrested from Bhootnath crematorium here for allegedly beheading the woman as an offering to the goddess Kali a few days before the Ambubachi Mela.
Diganta Barah said the woman and four men had first performed Kapali puja, a tantrik practice, on the intervening night of June 18-19 in 2019 first at the crematorium where all of them consumed alcohol. They then went to Joy Durga Mandir, where after another round of puja the woman was beheaded with an axe.
The victim’s head was taken in a packet by the men and disposed of in the Brahmaputra river, he said.
Barah said during the investigation it was found that the puja was sponsored by a person named Pradeep Pathak alias Dinesh for his younger brother, who was a Naga sadhu and had died 11 years ago on the same day.
Pathak was subsequently arrested from his residence in Mathura on April 1, 2023.
