''Like the proverbial tip of a very deep iceberg, available data hides much of the reality of a problem that is deeply ingrained in society,'' said New Delhi-based Partners for Law in Development. ''It is only the most gruesome cases that are reported – most cases of witch-hunting go unreported and unrecorded.''

It’s an issue that despite its prevalence is rarely covered outside of India, where it’s almost weekly newspaper fodder. Last week in Chandrapur, one man was lynched and his ''woman accomplice thrashed by a mob for practising black magic,'' reported the Times of India, which said the man ''was caught red-handed by the mob of over 500 villagers''. Another woman accused of witchcraft was grabbed by relatives carrying ''traditional weapons'' and beaten to death, the same newspaper reported. Late last year, in Jharkhand, a 50-year-old woman and her daughter were hacked to death after they were accused of practising witchcraft.

The forces driving the killings, which occur predominantly in Indian states with large tribal populations, are as much cultural as they are economic and caste-based, experts said. While the easiest explanation is that angered mobs confuse a sudden illness or crop failure with witchcraft and exact their revenge, it’s rarely that simple. Much more often, it isn’t superstition but gender and class discrimination. Those accused of sorcery often come from similar backgrounds: female, poor and of a low caste.

''Witch-hunting is essentially a legacy of violence against women in our society,'' wrote Rakesh Singh of the Indian Social Institute. ''For almost invariably, it is [low caste] women, who are branded as witches. By punishing those who are seen as vile and wild, oppressors perhaps want to send a not-so-subtle message to women: docility and domesticity get rewarded; anything else gets punished.''

The veil of superstition, others said, only hides the true motive behind the killings. ''Superstition is only an excuse,'' Pooja Singhal Purwar, a social welfare official, told The Washington Post in 2005. ''Often a woman is branded a witch so that you can throw her out of the village and grab her land, or to settle scores, family rivalry, or because powerful men want to punish her for spurning their sexual advances. Sometimes, it is used to punish women who question social norms.''