Other Witchcraft Punishments.
Dr. Chevers has collected a number of instances in which the punishment of death or mutilation was inflicted on supposed witches. He quotes a case in 1802, in which several of the witnesses declared that they remembered numerous instances of persons being put to death for sorcery; one of them, in particular, proved that her mother had been tried and executed as a witch. In another case a Kol, thinking that some old women had bewitched him, placed them in a line and cut off all their heads, except that of the last, who, objecting to this drastic form of ordeal, ran away and escaped. In another, the nose-ring of a suspected witch was torn out with such violence as to cause extensive laceration. There are recorded instances of even more brutal forms of mutilation. A case occurred at Dhâka in which some people went to the house of a supposed witch, intending, as they said, to make her discontinue her enchantments, and ill-treated her in such a shameful way as to leave her in a dying state. She appears to have been in the habit of prescribing medicine for children, and this seems to have been the only basis for the reports that she practised magic.[66]