Indian gang rape victim faces 'purification ritual' - BBC News

A woman who was gang raped for eight months in Gujarat, western India, is now not only pregnant as a result, but has been ordered to face "purification tests" by her community's local courts. The BBC's Ankur Jain reports on what this gruelling ritual will entail and why it is still endured.

The shy, softly spoken 23-year-old - who cannot be named for legal reasons - was living happily with her husband and two children in Surat when she was abducted last July and repeatedly gang raped by more than five men over several months.

She is now heavily pregnant and her petition for abortion was turned down by the Gujarat High Court because she was too advanced in her pregnancy.

Now, staying in a two-room house in Devaliya village, Ranpur Taluka, Gujarat, she spends her time with her two children. Her in-laws refuse to take her back and her husband has left his parents to be with her. But she spends all her time with the children, snuggling them and holding them tight.

And while her own parents are glad to have her back, they are concerned that the baby she is soon to give birth to will affect the rest of the family.

"I have two other children both unmarried. If she delivers the baby and keeps it then no one will marry them," explained her mother. "My 14-year-old son will get cast out. The only way out is that she will have to undergo the 'chokha thavani viddhi' (purification ritual) and whatever the community decides will be final."

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"Whenever a husband has doubt about his wife, or an unmarried girl is accused of an affair, to purify a woman and free her from the wrongdoings, a purification process is conducted. For men, the community courts conduct tests to check if they are telling lies but no purification is used," he explained.

Indian gang rape victim faces 'purification ritual' - BBC News