https://www.scmp.com/rss/326872/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com When the cargo truck carrying Bilkis Bano and her family shuddered to a halt in the Dahod district of Gujarat, India, the young mother was so afraid of what was about to happen that her shivering woke her three-year-old daughter, Saleha. Bano, still just a teenager herself, rocked the wailing child but could not comfort her. Within seconds a mob of men armed with swords and sickles tore Saleha from her arms and smashed her skull against a rock, silencing her forever. “Here are the Muslims, kill... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3010554/gujarat-riots-they-raped-me-butchered-my-child-because-we-were?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3010554/gujarat-riots-they-raped-me-butchered-my-child-because-we-were?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 May 2019 02:00:07 +0000 Satish Bairagi, who claimed to be the Man Friday of a 220-year-old holy man in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, had an idea. When his childhood friend Hemant Kolapkar confided that his wife Kavita had not been able to conceive after six years of marriage, Bairagi convinced him that the saint – whom he claimed was a reincarnation of Lord Shiva – had magical cures to all illnesses. There was an invisible power working against his family, Bairagi told Kolapkar, and a ritual would solve the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2165680/prayed-child-raped-godman-indias-deadly-childbirth-superstitions?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2165680/prayed-child-raped-godman-indias-deadly-childbirth-superstitions?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 05 Oct 2018 02:45:45 +0000 Khushi, an Indian transgender woman, never thought that when she challenged a policeman who had grabbed her breast it would set off a series of events that would leave her seeking justice more than four years later. During a pilgrimage to a Muslim shrine in Rajasthan state, she was arrested and brought to a police station where she was beaten and raped. Adding insult to her injuries, she had to beg authorities to register a complaint. How a rape exposes the conflict between two visions of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2154077/india-no-country-transgender-women?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2154077/india-no-country-transgender-women?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Jul 2018 05:01:26 +0000 After her six-year-old son went missing in January 2017, Sarika Ingole, a homemaker, scoured every corner of her village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra to find him. But when Krishna, a class one student, was found 18 hours later, she chose not to look at him. The boy’s mutilated corpse was left only a few metres from his home. His clothes were torn, his belongings missing and his eyes had dozens of marks from needle piercings under them. “They had slit his throat with a knife,” says... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2141250/indias-killer-godmen-and-their-sacrificial-children?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2141250/indias-killer-godmen-and-their-sacrificial-children?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Apr 2018 05:32:21 +0000