Bhopal: A remote, non-descript village in Madhya Pradesh comes into life every “Nagpanchami” day (an annual ritual of Hindus involving worshiping of snakes), where a court is established to conduct trials of the serpents those caused harms to the people.
Famously known as “Sihore Durbar” in local parlance, the court set up in the village of Sihore Khurd under Gairatganj block in Raisen district on the outgoing “Nagpanchami” day on Monday conducted trials of at least three dozen snakes that hurt people in the whole region in the past one year.
“The ‘durbar’, presided over by the local priest Ajey Singh, used to sit every ‘Nagpanchami’ day for the past three decades. People, victims of snake bites, attend the court to ‘elicit’ an assurance from souls of the ‘accused’ reptiles that they would not harm them in future”, former local sarpanch Govind Ram, who also took his daughter, stung by a snake earlier, to the ‘durbar’ told this newspaper on Tuesday. Thousands of people throng the place to witness “trials of snakes”.
