WARNING THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC INFORMATION
A married couple in India has used a homemade guillotine to decapitate themselves at the same time.
Hemubhai Makwana, 38, and his wife Hansaben, 35, removed their own heads with a 'guillotine-like mechanism' into a 'fire altar' for a ritual sacrifice in Vinchhiya, Gujarat, in western India.
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Vinchhiya Police sub-inspector Indrajeetsinh Jadeja said the couple was performing a 'ritual' between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
"The couple first prepared a fire altar before putting their heads under a guillotine-like mechanism held by a rope," Jadeja said, as per the Hindustan Times.
"As soon as they released the rope, an iron blade fell on them, severing their heads, which rolled into the fire."
Fire is considered a sacred force in Hinduism and plays a significant role in several rituals of worship.
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Police revealed the couple designed the homemade guillotine in such a way that their heads would roll down and into the fire altar, thus completing their sacrificial ritual.
The pair left a suicide note for their two children, parents and relatives.
Family alerted police to the double suicide after they discovered what the Makwanas had done.
Relatives told The Hindustan Times that the pair had been holding daily prayers and offerings for the past year.
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Police recovered a suicide note, in which the couple urged their relatives to take care of their parents and two children.
Officials have ruled the twin suicides as accidental deaths and both bodies have been sent for post-mortems.
Human sacrifices are uncommon in India but not unheard of.
According to The Guardian, India’s National Crime Records Bureau recorded 103 cases of human sacrifice in the country between 2014 and 2021.
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The ritualistic slayings are usually conducted to appease deities and are less common in cities.
Sacrifices are more often seen in tribal and remote areas, where widespread belief in the occult and witchcraft still exist.
However, nearly all cases of human sacrifice involve people killing others rather than themselves.
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Earlier this month, Indian police arrested five men for the 2019 murder of a woman inside Hindu temple in Guwahati in the northeast Indian state of Assam.
A total of 12 people are thought to be involved in the murder of Shanti Shaw, 64, who was decapitated with a machete, The Guardian reports.
Police claim the killing was a case of ritual human sacrifice.
Topics: World News, News, Crime, Weird