Policing and the God of Death: Legal– Religious Iconography Amidst COVID-19 Pooja Satyogi 1 Introduction In the South Asian context, religious figures are constantly recreated and given new forms in the face of collective dangers. The article shows the cruelty and the doubling of the jurisdiction of death that is entailed in the figure of the police official disguised as the God of death. I will argue that the theatrics of policing, premised as it might be on welfare policing, is, nevertheless, embedded in deep histories and ecologies of horrifying violence in which both the public and the police are complicit. The rec- ognition of the spread of COVID-19 in India coincided with the festival of Holi in March. An important ritual associated with the festival is Holika Dehan, symbolically signifying the burning of an asura (demoness) 1 , Holika, in communal bonfires. This year, Holika Dehan also became a moment to burn away effigies ofCoronasur (the new demon that is COVID-19). In some parts of Mumbai, effigies of Corona- sur were burnt along with those of men convicted and executed on 20 March 2020 for the sexual assault of a young girl in Delhi in the 1 In the Hindu mythology, demons may be both good and evil and the characterisation does not equate to evil in Christian cosmology. Opinion Society and Culture in South Asia 7(1) 133–140, 2021 © 2021 South Asian University Reprints and permissions: in.sagepub.com/journals- permissions-india DOI: 10.1177/2393861720979891 journals.sagepub.com/home/scs 1 Ambedkar University, New Delhi, Delhi, India. Corresponding author: Pooja Satyogi, 11/443, Vasundhara, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh 201012, India. E-mail: psatyogi@aud.ac.in