Nagarajan is wide awake now. Has she completely lost her head? Does she think she can take control of her own life just like that? He reminds her of the dreadful business that shook the village not long ago. The daughter of one of their neighbours, a Dalit like her, had decided to study in the city. The Jatts had caught her as she fled across country. They had taken her to a remote field and raped her, eight of them, for two whole days. When she had returned home to her parents she could barely walk. They had filed a complaint with the Panchayat, the village council, the lawmakers in rural areas. The council was controlled by the Jatts, of course. They left no seat for a woman, or a Dalit, though they were required to do so by law. Every decision taken by the council was binding, even if it was contrary to the Indian constitution. This parallel system of justice was never contested. The council had offered the family cash as compensation, in exchange for the withdrawal of their complaint. But the young woman had refused the tainted money. Her father had stood by her at first, but he had buckled under pressure from his community, and killed himself. He had left his family with no income and condemned his wife to the horrors of widowhood. She and her children were banished from the village. They were forced to abandon their home, and they had ended up destitute, living by the side of the road.

Smita knows this story. No need to remind her. She knows that here, in her own country, victims of rape are often considered culpable. There is little respect for women, still less if they are untouchable. These creatures that must not be touched, or even looked at, can still be raped, with impunity. Rape is meted out as punishment to the wife of a man who has got himself into debt. To the sisters of a man who commits adultery with a married woman. Rape is a powerful weapon, a weapon of mass destruction. Some even talk of an epidemic. A recent judgement by a village council not far away had sparked widespread debate: two young women were sentenced to be undressed and raped in public to expiate the crime of their brother, who had run away with a married woman from a higher caste. The sentence had been carried out.