Black Magic Accusations Today: Modern Witch-Hunts and Laws

Accusations of black magic, meaning harmful sorcery or witchcraft directed against other people, are not only a matter of history. In parts of Africa, South Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East and in migrant communities in Europe and North America, people accused of causing illness, death or misfortune by occult means still face exile, violence and sometimes death, while governments respond with laws that either punish sorcery itself or, more often today, punish the accusation and the attack. This article surveys these modern patterns from a historical and anthropological perspective.

What "Black Magic" Means in Modern Accusations§

The phrase "black magic" is an English label, and the beliefs it translates vary widely: dayan or daain (a witch) and kala jadu (black magic) in north India, sihr (sorcery) in Arabic-speaking and Muslim societies, kindoki in the Congo region, sanguma in parts of Papua New Guinea, obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean, and many terms across Africa usually translated as witchcraft. What unites them is the idea that some people can harm others through hidden, non-physical means, either deliberately, through spells and medicines, or involuntarily, through an innate evil power.

Anthropologists have long distinguished between witchcraft, an inborn capacity to harm, and sorcery, a learned technique using objects and words. The distinction, drawn by Evans-Pritchard among the Azande of central Africa, does not fit every society, but it helps to explain why some accused people are thought capable of harming without knowing it. The European history of the idea, from goeteia to the witches' sabbath, is traced in black magic history; this article concerns the living belief, which is held by people of many religions, including Christians, Muslims, Hindus and followers of African traditional religions, and also rejected by many within each.

Why Accusations Arise: Misfortune, Envy and Social Strain§

Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (1937) made a famous observation: the Azande knew perfectly well that a granary collapsed because termites had eaten its supports, but witchcraft explained why it fell at the moment particular people were sitting beneath it. Belief in harmful magic answers the question "why me?" that natural explanations leave open, and it locates the cause of misfortune in a person who can be confronted.

Accusations therefore tend to follow sudden deaths, illnesses that do not respond to treatment, infertility, failed harvests and disputes over land or inheritance. Historians of the European witch trials have found the same pattern of neighbourly tension. Since the 1990s scholars such as Peter Geschiere, and Jean and John Comaroff, have argued that witchcraft discourses in Africa are thoroughly modern, flourishing amid rapid urbanisation, migration, unequal wealth and political competition: sudden riches may be attributed to occult dealings, and resentment of the successful or the burdensome may be expressed as suspicion of witchcraft. Charismatic preachers and commercial "witch-finders" who claim to detect and remove witchcraft have in some regions intensified the problem.

Sub-Saharan Africa: Witch Camps, Child Accusations and the Law§

Northern Ghana is known for its so-called witch camps, settlements such as Gambaga where women accused of witchcraft, most of them elderly, have sought refuge after being driven from their villages. Human rights organisations have campaigned for their closure and for the reintegration of residents, and the killing of a ninety-year-old woman, Akua Denteh, after an accusation in 2020 prompted national outrage and renewed calls to criminalise witchcraft accusations.

In Kinshasa, south-eastern Nigeria and elsewhere, a different pattern emerged from the 1990s: accusations against children, who are blamed for family misfortune and then abandoned or subjected to violent "deliverance". Researchers have linked the phenomenon to poverty, family breakdown, conflict and certain revivalist churches, while noting that most churches oppose such practices. Some Nigerian states, beginning with Akwa Ibom's child rights law of 2008, made it an offence to stigmatise a child as a witch.

African legal systems inherited colonial witchcraft ordinances that typically punished both the pretence of witchcraft and the accusation of it, reflecting the European view, set out in magic and the law, that witchcraft was a superstition. Many Africans regarded such laws as protecting witches and denying real harm. Some post-colonial states have revised them; Zimbabwe's criminal code of 2004, for example, punishes practices intended to cause harm by witchcraft while continuing to punish false accusation, an attempt to acknowledge popular belief without endorsing violence.

South Asia: Dayan Accusations and Anti-Black-Magic Acts§

In India, accusations of being a dayan are concentrated in rural districts of Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Assam and neighbouring states, often among poor and Adivasi communities. Victims are overwhelmingly women, frequently widows, and studies have shown that accusations often coincide with disputes over land or property. Official crime statistics record dozens of murders motivated by witchcraft accusations each year, and many more cases of beating, humiliation and expulsion.

State legislatures have responded with specific laws. Bihar passed a prevention of witch practices act in 1999, followed by Jharkhand and several other states. Maharashtra's Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act of 2013, passed after the murder of the rationalist campaigner Narendra Dabholkar, who had long promoted such a law, prohibits exploitation through claims of supernatural power as well as violence against those accused. Karnataka followed in 2017, and Assam's Witch Hunting Act, passed in 2015, received final assent in 2018. Supporters see these laws as protections for the vulnerable; some critics have argued that broad definitions risk criminalising ordinary religious practice, a debate that echoes older arguments about where religion ends and magic begins.

Sihr, Sanguma and Obeah: Sorcery Laws Elsewhere§

In Islamic thought, sorcery (sihr) is generally regarded as real but forbidden; the Qur'an's account of Harut and Marut in Surat al-Baqara is the classic text, and protection is sought through prayer and Qur'anic recitation, as described in jinn and the unseen in Islam. A few states treat sorcery as a serious criminal offence. Saudi Arabia has prosecuted people for sorcery under its interpretation of Islamic law, and executions for sorcery were reported there in the early 2010s, drawing criticism from international human rights organisations.

Papua New Guinea took the opposite path. Its Sorcery Act of 1971 had recognised sorcery as a crime and allowed belief in sorcery to be pleaded in mitigation of violence; after the public burning of a young woman accused of sorcery in Mount Hagen in February 2013, Parliament repealed the act and strengthened penalties for sorcery-related killings. In the Caribbean, colonial anti-obeah laws, first enacted in Jamaica after the slave rebellion of 1760, criminalised African-derived spiritual practice for two centuries, and some remained on the statute books into the twenty-first century; Diana Paton's history shows how such laws served colonial control as much as public safety.

Fear of Black Magic in Europe, North America and International Law§

In Western countries, fear of black magic surfaces in two main ways. The first is fraud: so-called psychics and spiritual advisers have been prosecuted for persuading clients that they are cursed and charging large sums for removal of the curse. The second, much graver, is abuse within families who believe a child is possessed or practising witchcraft. The deaths of Victoria Climbié in 2000 and Kristy Bamu in 2010 in London led the British government to publish guidance on child abuse linked to faith or belief. These cases are distinct from the imagined conspiracies of the Satanic panic of the 1980s, though both show how belief in hidden evil can turn against the vulnerable.

International bodies have increasingly treated witchcraft accusation as a human rights issue. In 2021 the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the elimination of harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks, and non-governmental networks document cases worldwide. Historians such as Ronald Hutton have argued that comparing these situations with the early modern European trials can illuminate both, while cautioning against treating any society as simply "backward": fear of harmful magic has been a recurring human response to misfortune, and the decisive factor in whether it leads to violence has usually been how communities, churches and states choose to respond.

Frequently asked questions§

Is black magic illegal?§

It depends on the country. Most states do not recognise magic as real and instead punish fraud, threats or violence. A few, notably Saudi Arabia, treat sorcery itself as a crime. Several Indian states, Papua New Guinea and others have laws aimed specifically at preventing witch-hunting and exploitation.

Why are older women often accused of witchcraft?§

Researchers point to vulnerability and social position: widows and older women may lack protectors, may hold land others want, and may be blamed for deaths in the household. Similar patterns appeared in the European witch trials, where older women were also prominent among the accused.

What is the Maharashtra Anti-Black Magic Act?§

It is a 2013 law of the Indian state of Maharashtra prohibiting human sacrifice, exploitation through claims of supernatural power and violence against people accused of witchcraft. It was enacted after the murder of Narendra Dabholkar, who had campaigned for it for many years.

Do anthropologists think witchcraft beliefs are disappearing?§

Not necessarily. Many argue that beliefs in harmful magic adapt to modern life, explaining new forms of wealth, inequality and insecurity. Education and development have not consistently reduced accusations, which is why legal protection and community responses remain important.

Sources and further reading§

• Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande — E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 1937
• The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa — Peter Geschiere, 1997
• Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust: Africa in Comparison — Peter Geschiere, 2013
• The Witch: A History of Fear — Ronald Hutton, 2017
• The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity in the Caribbean World — Diana Paton, 2015