Anita Mandal and her two-year-old daughter were drowned in the River Ganga after a village exorcist in West Bengal convinced her relatives that the two were witches. Police were able to recover their bodies in the Manickchawk area of Malda district in north region of the state.

They had initially suspected suicide. It is reported that Anita, the wife of a daily wage laborer, was very obsessed with her daughter and kept the baby away from others.

Rumors began circulating that the mother and daughter were possessed and the exorcist told villagers that the two were witches and he asked them to drown the two in the Ganga and threatened that ghosts would haunt the village if they failed to do so. Malda police official Dilip Mandal confirmed this and said, "The people behind the act have confessed to the crime and we would make arrests soon," he said.