More than four dozen men have been arrested in India for the repeated sexual abuse of a teenager over years, police told AFP Wednesday.
The young victim is a Dalit, the lowest rung in the rigid Hindu caste system, who are disproportionately targeted for sexual violence in a country with high rates of crime against women.
The unnamed woman, now 18, said around 60 men sexually abused her in her southern home state of Kerala beginning from when she was just 13.
“Forty-nine people have been taken into custody,” Pathanamthitta district police official Nandakumar S told AFP.
The accused men were known to the woman and included neighbours and family friends.
Rajeev N, a lawyer who heads a local child welfare committee, told AFP that the woman’s parents were “unaware of their daughter’s nightmare”.