Muzaffarnagar:
In the new house that her husband and she have built, far away from the village they used to live in, a 26-year-old woman describes the Hindu-Muslim violence that forced them to relocate.
In the midst of the clashes that were spiraling in Muzaffarnagar in Western Uttar Pradesh, she was accosted by three men as she was trying to flee her village for a relief camp. They held a knife to her two-year-old's throat, forcing her to acquiesce into following them into a sugarcane field where they took turns raping her.
"I didn't protest, they said they will kill my son if I shout for help," she recalls, before breaking down. "I was so scared that if my husband finds out, he will leave me".
To ensure he didn't discover what had happened, she says she did not immediately report the matter to the police or visit a hospital.
But a week later, she confided in him, and he insisted they complain to the police.
They built their home there with the five lakhs that has been paid by the state government to families dislocated by the communal riots. The one-bedroom house is in a village where Muslims are in the majority. To get to the nearest police station, the woman would have to walk through several villages where Hindu Jat farmers dominate. So she has mailed her complaint to the cops.
Activist Vrinda Grover is assisting her and six other women who have alleged that they were raped during the riots in September.
In this woman's case, the suspects are reportedly threatening her to withdraw the complaint. There's no clarity on why the police has not interrogated or arrested them yet, though the woman says she has identified them as men who lived near her at the time.