A harrowing case of alleged sexual abuse and exploitation has emerged from Kerala, India, where 58 men and boys have been arrested in connection with the rape and gang rape of a Dalit girl, who was allegedly abused for five years, starting when she was just 13 years old.
Two of the 60 men who sexually violated the girl have since fled the country to evade arrest. The case has ignited a debate about the vulnerability of Dalit women in India and the systemic issues that contribute to their marginalisation.
The allegations came to light after the now 18-year-old girl confided in a counsellor visiting her college in Kerala state, detailing years of horrific abuse. Police say the alleged abuse began five years ago when a neighbour allegedly sexually abused the girl, who is the daughter of poor wage labourers from one of India’s most marginalised communities.
It is alleged that the abuser filmed the initial assault and police are investigating whether he used these images to blackmail and manipulate the girl into being raped and sexually abused by dozens of other men and boys over the next five years.
Kerala Police Deputy Inspector General Ajeetha Begum told CNN that another two men wanted in connection with the case have fled the country.
The accused include her schoolmates, relatives, neighbours — men from all corners of her life, ranging from minors to men in their mid-40s, according to case documents reviewed by CNN and interviews with local police. Charges have not yet been filed and the 58 men remain in detention. None of the accused has spoken publicly about the allegations. Under Indian rape laws, the girl has not been identified.
The allegations have sent ripples through the girl’s village in the green hills of Kerala, where many work as wage labourers in low-paid jobs like construction and farming. Police say the girl’s parents worked long hours and did not know about the alleged abuse of their daughter.
When the allegations emerged last month, some women in the community were sympathetic towards the accused and angry at the survivor, according to local media outlet The News Minute. The women criticised the girl’s clothing and lifestyle and blamed her mother for not watching over her more closely, The News Minute reported. One mother, whose son was among the accused, said he was innocent. She said he had known the girl since she was a baby and “had raised the girl in his arms,” according to the outlet.
The case has not sparked the same level of outrage seen in other instances of violence against women in India, such as the rape and murder of a trainee medic in Kolkata last August, which led to nationwide protests. Experts and activists attribute this disparity to the victim's Dalit identity.
Dalits traditionally carry out occupations viewed as ritually “unclean” by Hindu scripture, such as manual scavenging, waste picking and street sweeping. They are often banned from visiting temples and forced to live apart from higher-caste communities, often in squalor and farther from access to services.
Despite legislation banning discrimination based on caste, activists say the stigma leaves India’s more than 260 million Dalits vulnerable to abuse and less able to seek redress for crimes committed against them.
“When it’s Dalit women, in general the outrage is less across the country,” said Cynthia Stephen, a Dalit rights activist and social policy researcher. There is a sense that “this girl is not ‘one of us,’” she said.
The alleged abuse began when the young man from the village molested the girl and took sexually explicit videos and photos, police told CNN. At least three of her abusers promised to marry her, according to police. One threatened to kill her if she reported the abuse. Some of the men acted alone, police said. But others are accused of gang rape.
“It’s not that all the cases are connected. But in one case, there might be four or five accused,” said Begum, from Kerala Police.
Many of the men contacted the young girl on her father’s phone, through social media apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp, late at night after he went to sleep, police said. The alleged abuse took place in private and public spaces, in homes and in cars, at bus stops and in fields. Some of the cases allegedly involved men who were strangers, living in towns dozens of miles away. Some of the cases involve allegations of human trafficking, because the men forced the girl to travel outside her village, police said.
More than half of Dalits in Kerala live in designated areas called “colonies,” known for cramped and harsh living conditions, after years of being denied land ownership under historical laws. Many women and girls living in these colonies lack resources and privacy, making them more vulnerable to abuse, Rekha Raj, a Dalit feminist activist from Kerala, told CNN.
Madhumita Pandey, a professor in criminology and gender justice at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom, said the tight-knit nature of communities such as these colonies could explain why the alleged abuse of the teenage girl was not reported until recently. “They could sometimes be your friend, uncle or neighbour,” she said. It can be harder to report abuse when “the so-called monsters are in our own backyard,” she said.
Official statistics support her point: the alleged perpetrator is known to the victim in more than 98% of reported rape cases in Kerala, according to government data.
There were 4,241 reported cases of rape against women from oppressed castes in India, including Dalit women, in 2022, the most recent year for which data exists, according to India’s National Crime Records Bureau. That’s equivalent to more than 10 rapes per day. There were more than 31,500 rapes reported overall in 2022, according to the NCRB.
The case has highlighted the urgent need to address the systemic issues that make Dalit women particularly vulnerable to violence and abuse in India.
