TETGAMA, July 9 -- Sonu Oraon was dozing off after dinner around 10pm on Sunday when a cacophony of sharp voices outside the hut shook him awake. A fellow villager, Ramdev Oraon, had dragged his sick nephew Sunil Oraon, and laid him on the courtyard outside. "You're a witch. You ate my son Sumit; now will you eat my nephew too? I'm giving you half an hour to fix him, or else I'll burn you alive," Ramdev shouted - his ire directed at Sonu's grandmother, Kanto Devi.

Almost everyone in their village of Tetgama - 15 km from district headquarters Purnia and 340 km north-east of Patna - knew that Ramdev's eight-year-old son Sumit had died roughly two weeks earlier. But Sonu hoped that the threats were just empty jibes from a bellicose man.

Th...