Word: kali
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...down on the earthen floor before the shrine. In ritual order, Karmakar wafted incense over her, tore off her blue skirt and pink T shirt, shaved her, sprinkled her with holy water from the Ganges and rubbed her with cooking fat. Then chanting mantras to the "mother" goddess Kali, he sawed off Manju's hands, breasts and left foot, placing the body parts in front of a photograph of a blood-soaked Kali idol. Police say the arcs of blood on the walls suggest Manju bled to death in minutes...
...Human sacrifice has always been an anomaly in India. Even 200 years ago, when a boy was killed every day at a Kali temple in Calcutta, blood cults were at odds with a benign Hindu spiritualism that celebrates abstinence and vegetarianism. But Kali is different. A ferocious slayer of evil in Hindu mythology, the goddess is said to have an insatiable appetite for blood. With the law on killing people more strictly enforced today, ersatz substitutes now stand in for humans when sacrifice is required. Most Kali temples have settled on large pumpkins to represent a human body; other followers...
...Pakistan: Al-Qaeda Redux India: Killing for Kali...
...secret ceremonies, however, the grizzly practice lives on. Quite simply, say the faithful?known as tantrics?Kali looks after those who look after her, bringing riches to the poor, revenge to the oppressed and newborn joy to the childless. So far this year, police have recorded at least one case of ritual killing a month. In January, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a 24-year-old woman hacked her three-year-old son to death after a tantric sorcerer supposedly promised unlimited earthly riches. In February, two men in the eastern state of Tripura beheaded a woman...
...Even if Shanmugavela did exploit the gullibility of the outsiders, some part of him must have been in thrall to the goddess's dark power. After making the offering, police sources say, Shanmugavela fell into a trance in the makeshift Kali temple and intoned a four-digit sequence, these numbers the twisted legacy of a woman's life. Michael drove straight to a betting shop and put down a few hundred dollars, carefully repeating the sequence. The numbers were, of course, losers. Had they been the winning numbers, would the sacrifice of Carolyn's life have been any less...