Evening time! I was taming the cattle when the neighbor came and grabbed my hair and started beating me. He wanted me to get out of his body. I was screaming in pain and anger. She survived dying that day, but had to leave the village. Now I am a witch for the place where I spent 50 years after getting married. Penetrating into the body of the rugs, eating the children, drying the fields.
What is visible even before the trouble in the eyes of about 65 years old Kajari Devi, is the desolation. Where spent the whole life, in the last days the yearning to get away from it with a stain. Kajri of Ulela village in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan was accused of being a witch a year ago. Everything changed since then.
In the afternoon, the women who gathered for pickles and papads started avoiding coming home. Teej-festivals started getting lost, but above all there was danger of life. Kajri had to leave the village. Now she lives at the house of her daughter-Jamai in Bundi district.
After traveling about 1260 kms from Delhi to Udaipur, we reached their new abode. This is a pond village. People were ready as soon as our car entered the village of about 500 houses. It turns out that they are scared because we are looking like ‘electricity department people’. Many people say, go back, the road is very bad.
We get down and move forward, removing the bushes. These obstacles are put up by the villagers, so that the electricity department does not reach their thefts.
Kajri’s house is also outside the village in the middle of the fields, from where there is no house for a kilometer. His son Motilal Mali says – I left my mother here with great care. Neither she will remain among the people, nor will the rumor spread. Once a garment is called Dakan, it remains the same till death. Even if the wound in his body heals, the word ‘Dakan’ will now follow him. And there is fear of life too. Tried to kill once, don’t kill again.
What happened?
Even before our question is over, Kajri starts telling in Mewari – in the evening the neighbor came home.
He was very angry and was screaming while calling me Dakan. I said that I am not a postman. I have children and children too, ships and boats too! Even then he did not agree and started beating me. He said that I should consider myself as a dakan and get out of the body of his clothes. On my repeated refusal, he got furious and dragged me to the raw well and pushed him there.
While falling, Kajari Devi grabbed the pipe of the well with her right hand. The villagers saved him, but could not save him from the charge of dakan.
The incident is of 5 October 2021. After the incident, the video of the injured Kajari Devi being pulled out of the well had also gone viral, but what spread even more was that Dokri (Kajri) had demonic power. In order to fulfill her wishes, she enters the body of young lugais and makes various demands.
Kajri shows her broken left hand and says – I do everything from the right. It’s useless now.
His daughter Meena Bai is sitting nearby. Weeping from the heat, the milkmaid tells the child by swinging the hand fan – people used to call me a witch too. There was no child for 20 years of marriage, then everyone started getting scared of me. Lugais did not come near that I would make them do anything. Mother-in-law also used to avoid me that I should not do magic.
I ask, pointing to the child – and now? ‘now what! 20 years have passed since I became a witch. Meena speaks with a laugh. They also don’t go anywhere.