MEWAT, INDIA - MARCH 14: (Editors Note: All names have been changed to protect privacy of the victims) Razia, a Paro was trafficked from Bihars Bhagalpur district at age of 14 and was pushed out of the family by her step sons on March 14, 2014 in Mewat, India. Trafficked brides are locally known as Paro or Molki (means one who has a price). These are pejorative labels in Haryana, Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh where the skewed sex ratio and entrenched feudalism has resulted in a flourishing trade in women trafficked from the poverty-ridden villages of Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. The women, who are usually promised marriage, find themselves in places like Mewat where the go-betweens sell them sometimes repeatedly to men who cannot find local women. Cut off from their native states, they are often confined and forced to work as bonded labour or pushed into forced marriages or prostitution. (Photo by Subrata Biswas/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
In another shocking attack by ‘self-proclaimed cow vigilantes,’ a Muslim woman was gang raped for allegedly “eating beef.” The 20-year-old and her 14-year-old cousin were attacked by a group of men who trespassed into their home in Mewat, Haryana, and murdered their uncle and aunt before sexually assaulting the female victims two weeks ago.
The police initially arrested four men for trespass and sexual assault, but after protests from the local community the men were charged with murder. Now the older victim has said the men asked the victims whether they ate beef and then attacked them.
“They asked if we eat beef. We said we don’t, but they insisted we did.
“Then they said we’re hurting you before so you don’t and that if we tell anyone we’ll will be insulted.”
Senior police officers have so far reportedly said the men had no link to so-called “cow vigilante groups”. But the Muslim community has expressed fears about a rise in attacks by Hindu groups. The region of Mewat has also been under attack for alleged “biryani-policing” after it was reported that policemen have been collecting biryani samples to test them for beef.
Read: The “Biryani-police” of India