Mansi, 13, was trafficked by a man from her neighboring village in northern Uttar Pradesh in 2012. She was raped by her trafficker close to a railway station in Maharashtra. The man belongs to an upper caste and has significant financial influence. Mansi escaped before he could sell her to a brothel and reported the incident to the railway police. Instead of taking any action, Mansi was held in custody for 12 days while the perpetrator and his influential family tried to coerce her to retract her complaint.
A view of Priya's room who was gang raped and choked to death at the Delhi-Haryana border. Priya, 24 was on her way back home from office, when she was gagged by two men from her neighbourhood and taken to an under-construction site. School children found her body two days later in a semi-naked condition with ants coming out of her eyes and mouth.
Shanti, 15, was in school when she was called out of the premises on a false pretext by a trusted middle aged neighbor. She was then raped and threatened with murder if she spoke about the incident to anyone. At the time of this photo she was seven months pregnant from the rape. She received medical care with support from a local NGO in Varanasi and gave birth to a son in March 2015.
Hemanti at her home in Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh. In 2013, Hemanti’s daughter Sumana, 20, was repeatedly gang raped by three men. She was then forced to walk naked in the torturous heat of the Indian summer and was subsequently murdered. Sumana’s naked body was found two days later, with cuts and acid burns on her face to prevent her from being identified. All the three perpetrators are now in prison. Their respective families have made several attempts to pressurize Hemanti to withdraw the case.
An abandoned house on the highway in Eastern Uttar Pradesh where two teenaged girls, Leena, 14, and Sonia, 14, were raped by two men and left to die. After the girls regained consciousness they walked five kilometers in the dark, bleeding in their torn clothes. The village leader and other local strongmen later tried to threaten the families to drop the case. The two girls have since been married and stay far away from the place where the incident occurred.
In 2011 Rajani, 15, was repeatedly raped by a man from her village after she had gone to the forest to defecate. Rajani’s mother found her bleeding in the forest. She was then immediately taken to the police station to lodge a complaint. The police refused to file the report, abusing Rajani’s mother instead. Rajani suffers from PTSD and hasn't spoken since the incident. In India, almost 60 percent of the rural households do not have access to toilets making women vulnerable to sexual assault.
Nilima, 8, was in her neighbourhood to celebrate the festival of Holi. She was nabbed by a group of boys and taken to a nearby paddy field and gang raped. Her body was found two days later cut in three pieces with her genitals removed to obliterate evidence of rape. The police were bribed by the perpetrators and initially refused to register a case. They reported that Nilima was attacked by wild animals. Later under public pressure, the police had to investigate and file formal charges.
Laxmi Devi, 52, outside her home in Uttar Pradesh's Ashapur district. She is the mother of a convicted rapist Mangal Yadav. Mangal, 35, a married man with two children, raped his 15 year old neighbor, Shanti. Shanti became pregnant as a result. Mangal's mother refuses to acknowledge her son's crime, claiming he is an honorable man who was trapped by Shanti.
Vinita, 17, was abducted by a man from the upperclass Brahmin community when she was on her way back home from school in Robertsganj, Uttar Pradesh. She was taken to a nearby pond and raped. Vinita's family supported her, immediately taking her for medical tests and lodging a police complaint. The perpetrator has been on the run since. As a result of the trauma and stigma from the incident, Vinita has dropped out of school.
Shabina, 20, at her house near Kolkata. Shabina was raped in 2007 by a man from her community. Her family and neighbors forced her to marry the perpetrator when she became pregnant from rape. Shabina gave birth to a son and was not accepted as a wife by her perpetrator. A year after the incident, her family lodged a police complaint and took the perpetrator to court.
Shamima Begum's six year old daughter was raped and brutally murdered by a neighbor in March 2015. The girl's body was found in a nearby field at the Rajmahal district in Jharkhand. The girl had several marks on her body and her arms were broken. The perpetrator's father later committed suicide out of shame by jumping in front of a train.
Notes from the personal diary of Lovely, 40, who is a marital rape survivor. Lovely fell in love with a classmate from her university and later married him. Within a month of marriage she was subjected to domestic violence and rape by her husband. Six months after marriage, Lovely filed for divorce. The laws in India does not legalise marital rape and states that it cannot be applied to the Indian culture.
Parama, 23, a mother of a four year old, works at a hospital in Kolkata as a nurse. During her divorce proceedings, Parama's ex-husband called her to his house on the pretext of discussing the divorce proceedings. He then raped her in front of his four friends, who were invited so that they could witness her humiliation. She filed a complaint and got him arrested in 2013. Her perpetrator is currently out on bail and has remarried.
Beena, 15, was going to be married in eight days when a distant relative in his forties with a wife and daughter volunteered to take her to meet her mother who lived in a nearby village. Instead, she was abducted and taken to a neighbouring state of Bihar. There, she was raped repeatedly for weeks. The police rescued her after her grandfather filed a complaint. The perpetrator's family later pressured Beena to withdraw the case.
Junaki, 13, was raped in a cow-shed by a 63 year old retired school teacher near Shahganj, Uttar Pradesh in June 2016. The man is a habitual sex offender and has committed many sexual offences but no one from the community has come forward to file any official reports against him. The man belongs to the upper caste and has financial and political power.