Police arrest 49 men for sexual abuse of Indian teen

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 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".

"The child is being kept away from the media and only police are visiting her to record her statements," he added.

The Indian Express newspaper reported this week that one of the accused men blackmailed the woman with a video that he had recorded when they had "physical relations".

After the threat, many of his friends sexually assaulted her.

A subsequent police investigation found that she had been gang-raped on at least five occasions, including once at a local hospital.

An average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people, but many more are thought to go unreported.

A court in the eastern city of Kolkata is this week expected to deliver its verdict against a man accused of raping and murdering a 31-year-old doctor last year.

The discovery of her bloodied body at a state-run hospital in August last year stoked nationwide anger and protests at the chronic issue of violence against women.