When Bhanwari Devi’s 13 year-old daughter was raped in the bajra fields by an upper caste youth, she picked up a lathi and went after the rapist herself. She had no faith in the police and courts. Either way, she was prevented from seeking any redress by the dominant castes of Ahiron ka Rampura. “The village caste panchayat promised me justice,” she says. “Instead, they threw me and my family out of Rampura.” Nearly a decade after the rape, no one in this village in Ajmer district has been punished.
It doesn’t mean much, though, in Rajasthan . On average in this state, one Dalit woman is raped every 60 hours.
Data from reports of the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes show that nearly 900 cases of sexual assault of SC women were registered with the police between 1991 and 1996. That’s round 150 cases a year – or one every 60 hours. (Barring a few months of President’s rule, the state was entirely in Bharatiya Janata Party
— source ruralindiaonline.org | P. Sainath | Apr 17, 2018