Indian brothers booked for attempting to sacrifice their children to find treasure

Police have nabbed two brothers for allegedly “attempting child sacrifice” to retrieve “hidden treasure” and have kept their families, including six children, in protective custody in India’s Assam, NDTV reported on Monday.

The accused were taken to the police station by locals on suspicion of attempting to sacrifice their own children in search of a buried treasure on the advice of a quack – locally known as Bez. The two brothers - Jamiur Hussain and Sariful Hussain – are residents of Dimowmukh village, about 370 km east of Guwahati and 10km from district headquarters Sivasagar.

As per details from the police, the locals became suspicious when they found six children - three from each brother - kept in confinement. Locals then took the two brothers, their wives and the children to the Sivasagar Sadar Police Station, said the report.

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"Locals said that a person identified as Bez from Sonari, about 45 km from Sivasagar, had told the brothers that they will find the gold hidden under a mango tree that's in their house if they sacrificed their children," a police official from Sivasagar said.

"In the absence of a formal complaint and eyewitnesses to support the allegations of human sacrifice, the police have kept the family in protective custody. We have started our own investigation in view of the allegations," Jayanta Sharati Bora, a senior police officer in Sivasagar was quoted by Indian media reports.