By Tim Binnall
As part of an ongoing crackdown on witchcraft, authorities in Tajikistan announced that, over the last year, more than 160 fortune tellers were busted for practicing the proverbial dark arts in the Central Asian nation's capital city of Dushanbe alone. Although outlawed nearly 20 years ago, divination and other forms of purported supernatural soothsaying have remained wildly popular in the country, much to the chagrin of government officials. In 2024, the nation's Interior Ministry increased the fines for sorcery back and, last year, proposed punishing those caught patronizing a fortune teller.
To mark the start of the new year, the Dushanbe Police Department reportedly detailed their efforts to combat sorcery in 2025, indicating that 163 suspected soothsayers were convicted of violating the ban and issued sizeable fines for the crime. Meanwhile, 14 mystics have been charged with being repeat offenders, which could result in them facing prison time if found guilty of the even more stringent law. On a broader scale, the Tajikistani government revealed that authorities throughout the country received nearly 500 reports of fortune telling in just the first half of last year. While it is uncertain how many of those individuals faced punishment under the nation's draconian sorcery ban, one presumes that a sizeable percentage wound up fined as a result of the literal witch hunt.