40 months from the 21st century, human beings are still being sacrificed in Bastar

Jagdalpur village , in the Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh, has its fair share, perhaps more, of human misery. And one sovereign specific for all ills.

Imminent famine. Recurring deaths of cattle and children. A general, non-specific dissatisfaction with the quality of life. For all these and more, the solution is identical -- human sacrifice.

That's right -- three and a half years away from the turn of the 21st century, human beings are led, like so much cattle, to the altar, their bodies are placed on the sacrificial blocks, and down comes the knife, to the chants of appropriate incantations. While the pious villagers look on, religious ecstasy nicely mingled with a sense of relief that it is not their turn, this time, to propitiate the gods with their own blood.

Incredible even for a Ripley? Too true, in fact. Even police records detail 19 human sacrifices conducted in this area since 1980 -- and given that the perpetrators are hardly likely to go to officialdom with their mea culpas in such matters, chances are good that the numbers are much, much higher.

The latest recorded instance happened just a week ago, when Kujama Nanda, head priest of the Dorla tribe, spurred his believers into choosing one among themselves for a sacrifice to propitiate the gods. Not to ward off some specific threatened evil, but merely on general principles that a happy, satisfied "god" is always better than one who hasn't got his quota of human blood.

The roots of this practise lie in -- where else? -- ancient history.

Recorded instances indicate that the Chindaak Naag and Chalukya kings organised human sacrifices in the temples of their dynastic goddesses, Manikeshaari Devi and Danteshwari Devi respectively.

In fact, Madhurantak Dev, the Naag ruler of circa 1065, dedicated the citizens of the entire village of Rajpur as potential human sacrifices. In other words, the natives of that village, like so much cattle, were bred and fostered with the goal of being slaughtered at auspicious, or even opportune, moments.

In the last century, Captain Gevin R Crawford, the British superintendent in charge of the territory, mounted an espionage mission aimed at discovering the truth or otherwise of charges that human sacrifice continued to be a prevalent practise in the region.

According to the report of Crawford's informant, Chalukya king Mahipal Dev arrived at Dantewada, near Jagdalpur, around midnight with an armed escort and, amidst the blare of trumpets and the beating of drums, supervised the systematic slaughter of 15 males. The report, in grisly detail, talks of how care was taken to ensure that as each head was lopped off, it rolled into the pit housing the sacrificial fire, and that 10 buffaloes and 600 goats shed their blood on that same altar. And more, that this was not an isolated instance, but a triennial event 'celebrated' with great pomp.

The practise was subsequently outlawed. The death penalty was prescribed -- a prescription, incidentally, that remains in force to this day.

However, even as the rest of India marches, in a welter of Coca Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, personal computers and Internet connections, into the 21st century, in the remote hamlet of Jagdalpur the sacrificial knife still rises and falls with monotonous regularity, sacrificing human lives on the altar of religious superstition.

Without, thus far, a single one of the perpetrators having ever been brought to book...