The Catalyst

By Rachel Davis, Reporter

The body of a beheaded man has been found in a West Bengal, India, temple in what some locals say appears to be a case of human sacrifice.

Police say they discovered the head and body of the victim, a middle-aged man, near a wooden block where goats are sacrificed in a temple to the goddess Kali near Chotomakdampur village in the western district of Birbhum, the BBC reported.

A villager was detained for questioning but a police official cast doubt on whether the killing was a human sacrifice, The Calcutta Telegraph reported.

"Investigations so far point towards a murder. We think it was made to look like a human sacrifice to mislead us," said Rabindranath Mukherjee, the district police superintendent.

A police officer told the newspaper investigators were trying to determine if the blood found near the base of the wooden block in the temple was that of the man or sacrificed goats.
Some villagers insisted it was a human sacrifice. "This man has been sacrificed to propitiate the gods," local official Kalyan Mukherjee said, the BBC reported.

India long ago outlawed human sacrifice, but the practice persists in some remote and underdeveloped areas under the influence of "witch doctors."

"This is a shame for Bengal, where the ruling Left coalition claim they have eradicated social evils and combated superstition," opposition leader Samir Kumar Ray said, the Telegraph reported.