A 32-year-old man was arrested for abducting and beheading a one-and-a-half-year old infant in a suspected case of human sacrifice in Madurai district in southern Tamil Nadu on Saturday. The police found the infant's headless body buried in one place and the head in another, at least 100 km
away.
According to the police, Abdul Gafur kidnapped the infant, Abdul Yusuf, from a mosque in the district's Goripalayam town, around 500 km from here, on Friday night. The baby was sleeping with his father.
Gafur, who allegedly believed he would be bestowed with supernatural powers if he drank the blood of a first male child of a couple, found Yusuf on Friday night and kidnapped him.
He then allegedly chopped off the infant's head to drink his blood, the police said.
The police said the headless body was buried at a dargah (shrine) at Eravadi in neighbouring Ramanathapuram district.
The Madurai police arrested Gafur from a rented accommodation at Eravadi where he had been staying for a month.
The accused had taken the head to a village called Tiruchendur in Tuticorin district in southeast Tamil Nadu, some 100 km away and buried it there.
Gafur hails from Tiruchendur but stays at a mosque in Madurai, where he practices unani healing, an ancient healing therapy.
