This woman, now aged 18 and whose identity has not been revealed, claimed to have been sexually assaulted from the age of 13, by around sixty men, in her State of origin, Kerala.
The family would not have known
A total of “49 people have been taken into custody,” confirmed Nandakumar S, a senior police official in Pathanamthitta district in southern Kerala. The men arrested were known to the victim, including neighbors and family friends.
“The family, however, was not aware of the nightmare (experienced by) their daughter,” Rajeev N, a lawyer who heads the district child protection committee, told AFP. The young woman “is kept away from the media and only the police visit her to record her statements,” he added.
Daily life The Indian Express reported this week that one of the defendants blackmailed the victim with a video he recorded during “their physical intercourse.” Following this blackmail, several of her friends sexually assaulted her.
Gang rape
According to the investigation, she was gang raped on at least five occasions, including once in a local hospital.
Some 90 rapes were recorded every day in 2022 in the most populous country on the planet with its 1.4 billion inhabitants, but a large number of them would have gone unreported.
A court in Calcutta, in the east of the country, is due to deliver its verdict this week against a man accused of raping and killing a 31-year-old female doctor last August.
The discovery of her bloodied corpse in a public hospital in Calcutta triggered a wave of emotion throughout the country, strikes by medical staff and massive demonstrations against chronic violence against women in the country.
