What Really Happens Inside Occult Crime Cases?
The red cloth is not always a symbol of faith. Sometimes, it is where the money disappears. The ashes are not always part of a ritual. Sometimes, they are evidence.
There is a darkness in India that rarely announces itself as a crime.
It arrives dressed in spirituality.
A red cloth.
A brass vessel.
A handful of ash.
A mantra whispered in a dark room.
A photograph.
A thread tied around a wrist.
A promise that an illness will disappear.
A promise that a lover will return.
A promise that money will multiply.
A promise that an enemy will be destroyed.
And sometimes, a promise that the impossible can be made possible.
For millions, spiritual traditions are a source of faith, identity and meaning. Tantra itself is a complex collection of religious and philosophical traditions and cannot honestly be reduced to “black magic.”
But somewhere between genuine spiritual practice and exploitation lies a dangerous territory.
It is the territory of the self-styled occult practitioner.
And when fear enters that territory, belief can become a weapon.
The first ritual is usually fear
Occult crimes rarely begin with violence.
They often begin with a problem.
A sick child.
A broken marriage.
A failed business.
A debt.
A desperate desire for love.
A family dispute.
A fear that someone has performed black magic.
A belief that an enemy is destroying one’s life.
Then someone appears with an explanation.
“This is not ordinary.”
“You have been affected.”
“Someone has performed a ritual against you.”
“There is negative energy in your house.”
“Your family is under a curse.”
“And only I know how to remove it.”
That sentence can change everything.
Because once an invisible enemy has been created, the person claiming to possess the solution acquires extraordinary authority.
The victim stops asking:
“Is this true?”
and begins asking:
“What should I do?”
That is where exploitation can begin.
₹2,100 first. Gold later.
On September 8, 2026, police in Indore arrested two men accused of cheating a woman by promising to perform occult rituals to solve household problems.
According to the police case reported by the Times of India, the woman initially paid ₹2,100.
The ritual then escalated.
The accused allegedly took her gold jewellery, placed it inside a red cloth bundle and told her to collect it the following day.
When she opened the bundle at home, the jewellery was gone.
Police later traced and arrested the suspects after analysing more than 200 CCTV cameras and conducting a search spanning roughly 3,000 kilometres. The stolen jewellery was reportedly recovered. A cheating case was registered under Section 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
Look closely at the mechanism.
The red cloth was not necessarily the crime.
The ritual was not necessarily the crime.
The crime alleged by police was the deception surrounding them.
And that distinction is critical.
Because when we call something “black magic,” we can accidentally hide the ordinary human crimes occurring underneath:
fraud.
coercion.
intimidation.
sexual exploitation.
violence.
murder.
The skull and the promise of control
In May 2026, police in Uttar Pradesh reported the arrest of three people in an investigation involving alleged occult practices and stolen human remains.
According to police, a 20-year-old man allegedly wanted supernatural control over his girlfriend and her family.
A self-styled tantrik allegedly convinced him that obtaining a human skull from a funeral pyre would enable a vashikaran ritual that would give him unquestioned control.
Police said a skull and bones were taken from the funeral pyre of a minor boy in Hapur for the alleged ritual.
There is something profoundly disturbing about this case.
Not because it proves that vashikaran works.
It proves something else.
The desire to control another human being can become so powerful that a person may become willing to cross boundaries most of society considers unthinkable.
The supernatural explanation becomes the language.
The underlying human emotion may be obsession.
Possessiveness.
Desperation.
Jealousy.
Control.
The ritual gives those emotions a costume.
When the ritual becomes a crime scene
Then there are cases where the language of occultism becomes almost impossible to separate from lethal violence.
In 2022, Kerala was shaken by the Elanthoor case.
Two women who sold lottery tickets were allegedly lured to a house in Pathanamthitta district. Police said the killings were carried out as part of a suspected ritual intended to bring prosperity.
The National Human Rights Commission subsequently took suo motu cognisance of the case and said the reported human sacrifice represented a gross violation of the victims’ right to life.
Contemporary reporting described police alleging that a self-styled practitioner had promised prosperity to a financially troubled couple through ritual sacrifice.
Two women disappeared.
Families waited.
Questions accumulated.
And eventually, what emerged was not a supernatural mystery.
It was an alleged human crime wrapped in a supernatural explanation.
That is the terrifying pattern.
The ritual does not erase the crime.
It can sometimes make the crime harder to see.
The child who was turned into an “offering”
In April 2026, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, became the centre of another horrifying investigation.
Police arrested a girl’s mother, an alleged occult practitioner and another man after a 13-year-old girl was allegedly killed in what investigators described as a ritual sacrifice.
According to police, the mother had been consulting the occult practitioner over her son’s health and domestic problems. Investigators alleged that the practitioner convinced her that the sacrifice of a virgin girl was necessary to cure him.
Police said the child was taken to the practitioner’s house, where rituals were performed before she was allegedly killed.
The investigation resulted in arrests, judicial proceedings and intervention by the Jharkhand High Court, while the National Commission for Women constituted an inquiry committee.
The horror of such cases is not merely that a ritual allegedly occurred.
It is that a human being was reduced to an instrument in someone else’s explanation of suffering.
A child became an “answer.”
A living person became an “offering.”
A mother became convinced that another human life could somehow solve a problem.
That is what happens when superstition stops being a private belief and becomes an excuse for violence.
The ashes are not always mystical
In February 2026, three people were found dead in a car near a Delhi flyover.
Police arrested a self-styled tantrik, Kamruddin alias “Baba,” alleging that he had poisoned the victims during a fake ritual intended to multiply their money.
According to the Indian Express, police alleged that the victims had brought ₹2 lakh for the promised ritual and were given sweets allegedly laced with poison before the accused fled with their money.
By May, Delhi Police had filed a 550-page chargesheet alleging that the accused had poisoned the three victims with drugged laddus during the purported “dhan varsha” ritual.
Think about the promise.
Not love.
Not revenge.
Not healing.
Money.
Money multiplied through a ritual.
It is one of humanity’s oldest vulnerabilities.
The desire to transform a small amount into a fortune.
The promise is extraordinary.
The price is immediate.
And the victim is encouraged to suspend ordinary questions because the entire transaction is wrapped in mystery.
And then there are the cases still unfolding
In March 2026, police in Nashik were investigating a self-styled godman in a widening case involving allegations of sexual exploitation and alleged occult practices. Prosecutors also raised questions about possible human sacrifice, while the accused denied allegations of black magic. The investigation was ongoing at the time of reporting.
That last detail matters.
An investigation is not a conviction.
In occult crime stories, sensationalism can be almost as dangerous as superstition.
A responsible investigation must distinguish between:
what someone claims,
what a witness alleges,
what police suspect,
what forensic evidence establishes,
what prosecutors argue,
and finally,
what a court proves.
Otherwise, journalism becomes another form of mythology.
Why do people believe?
This is perhaps the hardest question.
Why would an intelligent person surrender money to a stranger performing rituals?
Why would a family believe an occult practitioner’s explanation for an illness?
Why would someone believe that another person has supernatural control over their relationship?
Because human beings are not machines.
We are vulnerable to fear.
To grief.
To uncertainty.
To desperation.
When something terrible happens, the human brain searches for meaning.
If a child becomes sick, a parent wants an explanation.
If a marriage collapses, someone wants to know why.
If money disappears, someone wants to know who is responsible.
If nothing makes sense, an explanation—however extraordinary—can feel better than uncertainty.
And the person who provides that explanation can become powerful.
The psychology of the invisible enemy
The most dangerous feature of an occult claim is that it can be difficult to disprove emotionally.
Suppose someone tells you:
“You have been cursed.”
You begin watching your life.
You notice the argument you had yesterday.
The headache you experienced this morning.
The nightmare last night.
The unexpected expense.
The person who stopped calling.
The bad news at work.
Everything becomes evidence.
The mind begins constructing a pattern.
And once fear takes hold, ordinary events can acquire extraordinary meaning.
The supposed supernatural attack becomes self-reinforcing.
The victim becomes more frightened.
The practitioner becomes more important.
More rituals are recommended.
More money may be demanded.
More secrecy may be imposed.
More dependence develops.
The victim may eventually reach a point where leaving the practitioner feels more frightening than staying.
That is not supernatural control.
That is psychological control.
The business of desperation
Occult exploitation has a remarkably simple economic model.
Find pain.
Give the pain a supernatural explanation.
Offer a supernatural solution.
Create urgency.
Demand payment.
If the problem remains, explain why another ritual is necessary.
If something goes right, claim the ritual worked.
If something goes wrong, blame another curse.
The cycle can continue indefinitely.
And the victim can become trapped inside an explanation that can never be falsified.
That is what makes such exploitation so dangerous.
A normal service can fail.
An occult promise can simply generate another explanation for why it failed.
What happens inside the ritual room?
Perhaps not what cinema teaches us.
There may be no supernatural event.
There may be objects carefully arranged to create authority.
There may be chanting.
Smoke.
Darkness.
Symbols.
Ash.
Threads.
Photographs.
Personal belongings.
Promises.
Warnings.
And psychological theatre.
None of those things, by themselves, prove criminality.
But they can become powerful tools when combined with deception.
A frightened person sitting in a dark room may already believe that something terrible has happened.
The practitioner does not necessarily need to create the fear.
They may only need to give it a name.
The most dangerous ingredient is not ash
It is authority.
When a person believes another individual possesses access to forces they cannot understand, normal boundaries can disappear.
The practitioner becomes the interpreter of reality.
“You are cursed.”
“I know why.”
“I know who did it.”
“I know how to remove it.”
“I know what will happen if you stop.”
The victim gradually loses the ability to evaluate the situation independently.
The practitioner becomes judge, doctor, spiritual authority, psychologist and fortune teller at the same time.
That concentration of authority is dangerous in any setting.
The red cloth
Perhaps that is why the image of the red cloth is so powerful.
Red can mean devotion.
It can mean ritual.
It can mean sacrifice.
It can mean warning.
But in an occult crime investigation, it can also become something much more mundane:
a place where evidence is hidden.
Jewellery.
Money.
Objects.
Photographs.
Personal belongings.
Or simply the psychological theatre necessary to make a deception believable.
The cloth itself has no criminal intention.
The human being behind it does.
The ashes
Ashes have existed in Indian religious traditions for centuries.
They can symbolize impermanence.
Death.
Renunciation.
Spiritual discipline.
The destruction of the ego.
But when an alleged criminal uses spiritual symbolism to deceive or terrorize someone, the meaning changes.
The ash becomes part of a performance.
The ritual becomes part of a transaction.
The transaction becomes exploitation.
And exploitation can become crime.
The object is not necessarily evil.
The intention behind its use is what matters.
The most frightening ritual is the one that requires no magic
Look at the cases again.
A man allegedly seeking control over his girlfriend.
A woman allegedly losing gold to a supposed occult ritual.
Victims allegedly poisoned during a fake wealth ritual.
Women allegedly murdered in a ritual presented as a path to prosperity.
A child allegedly killed because an occult practitioner claimed sacrifice could cure illness.
Different locations.
Different victims.
Different motives.
But beneath them runs a familiar human thread:
fear + desperation + authority + exploitation.
No supernatural explanation is required to understand that equation.
India does not need more fear. It needs more questions.
The answer to occult crime cannot simply be mocking believers.
Ridicule can drive frightened people deeper into secretive communities.
The answer is also not to attack every spiritual tradition.
India’s spiritual traditions are far too complex for such simplistic treatment.
The real fight is against exploitation.
Against fraud.
Against coercion.
Against violence.
Against people who use fear to acquire money or power.
Against anyone who convinces another human being that they have the right to control their body, choices, relationships or life.
And perhaps most importantly:
against the idea that suffering must always have a supernatural explanation.
Sometimes illness is illness.
Sometimes anxiety is anxiety.
Sometimes a relationship ends because another person has the right to leave.
Sometimes financial loss is the consequence of ordinary circumstances.
Sometimes coincidence is simply coincidence.
And sometimes a crime is not the work of a demon, curse or invisible force.
Sometimes it is simply the work of a human being.
The truth behind the ritual
Behind the red cloth, there may be faith.
Behind the ashes, there may be tradition.
Behind the mantra, there may be devotion.
But behind some alleged occult crimes, investigators have found something much darker:
greed.
obsession.
fraud.
sexual exploitation.
coercion.
violence.
murder.
That is the truth we should be brave enough to confront.
Because when an occult practitioner claims supernatural power, the most important question is not:
“Can this ritual really summon something?”
The question is:
“What is this person asking you to surrender?”
Your money?
Your freedom?
Your body?
Your judgment?
Your family?
Your trust?
Or someone else’s life?
That is where the ritual ends.
And the crime begins.
The final question
Perhaps the darkest lesson from India’s occult crime cases is this:
Human beings do not need supernatural powers to destroy another human being.
Fear is enough.
Desperation is enough.
Manipulation is enough.
Greed is enough.
And when those things are wrapped in sacred symbols, whispered in the language of ancient wisdom and performed beneath the smoke of incense—
evil does not need to look like evil anymore.
It can look like a blessing.
It can sound like a mantra.
It can arrive carrying a red cloth.
And by the time the ashes settle,
someone may already be gone.
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