Youth dies from snake bite, family sets sail body in river

Guwahati (Assam), September 8, 2018:Despite the progress being made by science and technology, a section in the society is still in the habit of following blind faith and black magic. This was evident in a recent incident of snake bite in Lower Assam’s Dhubri district.

On September 4, a college student Biswajit Barman, a resident of Salkuchagaon in Chapar, was bitten by a snake. Later, his family took him to a “bej” (quack) for treatment and not to a hospital. The bej failed to treat the youth and this made the family to eventually take him to the local hospital but the doctors there declared him dead on arrival.

Despite the doctors’ confirmation, the family went to the bej again and in the end, as per an old belief, set sail the body in a river hoping he will get back his life. The villagers believe that if a person dies after being bitten by a snake, he can be resuscitated by setting the body to sail in a river.