A video featuring a witch sparked polarized reactions from Dagestani Telegram users.

Some commentators called for reprisals against a woman they believed was practicing witchcraft on a beach in Dagestan. Others doubted the elderly woman was actually casting a curse.

A video of a woman kneeling on the seashore with a small fire burning next to her appeared on the Telegram channel "Tut Dagestan Makhachkala Kaspiysk Khasavyurt Derbent." The 10-second video is accompanied by a voiceover: "What is she doing! Look! She's sick," the woman says. The video was filmed from a distance, so it's impossible to see what the woman is doing.

"A woman was casting a curse on people near the city beach, pricking photos of people with a needle and burning them. Then she saw us and started filming us," a subscriber wrote in the video description. The message doesn't specify which city's beach the events described took place on or when.

This message on the Telegram channel, which has 130,506 subscribers, had garnered 153 comments by 4:38 p.m. Moscow time.

Some users were skeptical about what they saw. "Why do people believe this nonsense? Everything is the will of the Almighty," wrote Renat.

"I will never believe that those who wear the hijab cast spells," commented Sabina.

"Don't believe all this if you're truly religious," urged Uma.

"You should have asked what she was doing. There are a lot of them in the Caucasus. And the worst thing is that people turn to them," noted A001 MP77.

Some users called for harsh measures against the woman, who they believed was practicing witchcraft, including suggesting various methods of humiliation and death.

"Caucasian Knot" also reported that in December 2021, the Dagestan Ministry of Internal Affairs reported the arrest of a murder suspect. A 56-year-old woman in Makhachkala. The man said the deceased "instilled djinns in him, who darkened his life and prevented him from sleeping," and confessed to the murder of a witch on December 11.

As a reminder, neighboring Chechnya has been waging a campaign for many years to persecute people claiming to be healers, psychics, magicians, and sorcerers. Initially declared by the head of the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, in 2013, dozens of people were detained, and some went missing. The campaign subsequently subsided, but in 2019, persecution of residents for the occult intensified again. The Grozny state television channel regularly aired reports in which local residents repented of their witchcraft practices, and the director of the Center for Islamic Medicine, Adam Elzhurkaev, reprimanded them for their witchcraft.