The Angul police in Odisha Sunday arrested a woman priest and her three sons in a suspected human sacrifice of a 14-year-old boy, whose limbless body was found hanging from a tree on Friday in a local forest

The police identified the accused as Ritanjali Bagh of Tusur village under Kiakata police limit and her three sons —Soumyaranjan, Dibyaranjan and Jyotiranjan

The victim, Sanchit Biswal of Subarnapur village, had been ailing for the past few months, the police said. When his health had not improved even after consulting several doctors, his mother took him to Ritanjali, known locally for performing certain rituals, on July 22

According to the police, Ritanjali asked the boy and his mother to stay in separate rooms in her place of worship at night. Basanti could not find her son when she woke up the next day, and Ritanjali was also missing from the place, the police said

Basanti then lodged a missing complaint at the Kiakata police station on July 24. The villagers spotted the victim’s mutilated body hanging from a tree in the Baruni jungle on the morning of July 28