A man and a woman were yoked to a plough and forced to till a field like bullocks, after being accused by villagers of engaging in a relationship, deemed taboo under tribal customs, in Odisha’s Rayagada district.
The incident occurred a few days ago in Kangaramjodi village, under Sikarapai panchayat in Kalyansinghpur block of Odisha’s Rayagada district. However, it only came to light after disturbing visuals of the incident went viral on social media, drawing widespread attention.
Located in the Niyamgiri hill range, Kangaramjodi is a remote village where residents have only recently begun to come into contact with modern influences.
The couple involved — a man and his paternal aunt — were members of the same family. While there had long been rumours of a relationship between them, they were recently reportedly caught in a compromising position, which provoked the anger of fellow villagers.
Series of meetings
In response, members of the tribal community convened a series of meetings to decide the punishment for what they perceived as a grave offence. “After much deliberation, it was decided that the couple would be subjected to the ‘plough punishment’ — a traditional form of justice in our community. Had we pardoned them for such blasphemy, our deity would have cursed the village,” Biswanath Kurshika, a village elder, told reporters.
As part of the punishment, villagers performed rituals typically reserved for the dead — a symbolic gesture to mark the social banishment of the couple. Community members also took ritual baths to ‘purify’ themselves. A symbolic plough was then fashioned, and the couple were yoked and beaten with sticks, mimicking the act of traditional tilling.
Throughout this humiliating ordeal, the entire village stood by as silent spectators. Eventually, the couple were permanently expelled from the village and handed a token amount of ₹1,000. Their current whereabouts remain unknown.
Meanwhile, the Rayagada district administration said it would initiate an inquiry into the incident, after reports of the inhuman treatment surfaced in the media.
Recently, around 40 members of a tribal family in Rayagada district had gone for tonsuring their heads after a girl married a man from different caste.
