Indian police have arrested 5 males accused of conducting a human sacrifice, practically 4 years after the invention of a lady’s headless physique at a Hindu temple left officers baffled.

Shanti Shaw, 64, was killed and decapitated with a machete in 2019 after visiting the temple in Guwahati, a metropolis in India’s distant north-east.

Police made no progress within the case till Shaw’s physique was lastly recognized in January, sparking a renewed investigation that tracked down a number of culprits, with others nonetheless at giant.

“The five planned the killing of the woman,” the Guwahati police commissioner, Diganta Barah, stated on Tuesday. “A total of 12 people took part.”

Barah stated the alleged ringleader, Pradeep Pathak, 52, had orchestrated the killing as a part of a non secular ceremony to mark the anniversary of his brother’s demise.

“The accused apparently believed that the sacrifice would appease the soul of the deceased,” he added.

Pathak and 4 others had been taken into custody between 25 March and 1 April, with police nonetheless looking for their remaining seven accomplices.

India’s National Crime Records Bureau lodged 103 circumstances of human sacrifice within the nation between 2014 and 2021. Ritual killings are often carried out to appease deities and are extra widespread in tribal and distant areas, the place perception in witchcraft and the occult is widespread.

Last yr, two males had been arrested for allegedly killing a six-year-old boy within the capital, New Delhi. The culprits, each development employees, informed police they murdered the kid as an providing to the Hindu god Shiva to get wealthy.