Hindu relatives of a 20-year-old Christian woman in central India raped her and nearly killed her mother for their faith in Christ, sources said.
“Since we started to attend church six years ago, my father’s elder brother and his family have begun persecuting us in whatever way possible,” the woman, whose name is withheld as a rape victim, told Morning Star News.
She said she was sowing corn in Chhattisgarh state’s Kondagaon District early in the morning of July 15 when her father’s brother, Chinta Naag, who lives nearby, came to the field with his three sons and told her, her 18-year-old sister and their mother to stop cultivating the land.
The family depends on the land for their living in a village undisclosed for security reasons. Her mother told Naag the land belonged to her deceased husband, that she rightfully owned it and that he could not stop her from working on it, she said. In the ensuing heated argument, she said, the men threatened to kill them.
Naag’s three sons – Mukesh Dugga, Suresh Dugga and Lokesh Dugga – then caught the 20-year-old woman by her hair and began to drag her towards their house, she said. Her mother tried to stop them, but Mukesh Dugga attacked her with a spade (shovel), the victim said.
“One cousin hit my mother on her head with the axe, and the second one hit her with a spade on her chest,” she said. “They hit her repeatedly, till she collapsed in a pool of her own blood.”
The three Hindus dragged the 20-year-old woman into their nearby house as neighbors only watched despite her pleas for help, she said.
“Nobody came to rescue me, as they dragged me by my hair and my sister stood crying near my mother’s body,” she said.
The men took her inside a room in the house, she said.
“Lokesh stood with the axe threatening me to stay low and cooperate, otherwise he would kill me,” she said, her voice shaky. “Suresh Dugga caught hold of my neck pressing my head to the floor, while Mukesh Dugga stripped my legging and raped me.”
After the rape, when the men became a little distracted, the woman found an opportunity to flee. She headed straight to the nearby jungle, she said.
“My sister also joined me as I fled only with my upper garment,” said the woman, “leaving my mother’s body in the open.”
As the two women fled, the three men screamed at them, telling them not to report the crimes to police, she said, adding that Mukesh Dugga chased them into the jungle with the axe.
“We just ran with all our strength – we did not look back,” she said. “I don’t know how far we ran, but we stopped only when we reached the Dhanora police station.”
Shortly after 10 a.m., while they were reporting the crimes to police, Mukesh Dugga reached the station, she said.
“He quickly admitted that because we have become Christians, they do not want us to have a share of my father’s property as my father was not a Christian when he died, and we only started to believe after my father’s demise,” she said. “Mukesh admitted to striking my mother but denied that he raped me.”
Police registered a formal complaint under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 – First Information Report # 13 for “kidnapping,” “illicit sexual intercourse,” “gang rape,” “voluntarily causing hurt,” “criminal intimidation,” “attempt to murder” and “common intention.”
Police arrested Mukesh Dugga, and because the doctor at a local hospital was unavailable to provide medical tests for a rape victim, police asked the victim to return the next day for examination. Police then went to check on the injured mother, she said.
“We had no idea if our mother was dead or still alive,” she told Morning Star News.
Police found their mother unconscious and confiscated the weapon that the attackers had used, according to a First Information Report (FIR). Officers sent the seriously wounded woman to a nearby local hospital, which refused to admit her because of the extent of her injuries. The family rushed her to Kondagaon hospital, and from there to Raipur.
“Raipur doctors said, ‘Take your mother home, do not waste your time and money on her, she will not survive,’ and after listening to that we had lost all hopes,” her 20-year-old daughter said.
Doctors performed several surgeries on her mother. The attack had fractured her ribcage.
“The spade cut was so deep that it had reached the liver and damaged it,” the woman said. “Wherever doctors found clots, they put a pipe and removed all the clots.”
The following day, police arrested Naag and the other two sons.
Demand for Justice
Narendra Bhavani, founder of Chhattisgarh Yuva Manch and a leader of Indian National Congress party, demanded justice for the Christians at an Aug. 6 press conference in Kondagaon.
Bhavani told Morning Star News that “the dispute over the land arose only because of the family’s Christian faith,” and that he has demanded “compensation for the family, undisputed rights to cultivate their land and security for the victims from the district administration.”
A police letter to the Christian family dated Aug. 29 instructs them to present land ownership documents to the police station.
More than two months after the incident, the injured mother cannot leave the bed on her own power.
“Because of the prayers of so many, my mother has started to take oral food,” said her daughter, who has relocated for security reasons and attends to her mother 24 hours a day.
The family, which put their faith in Christ six years ago, attends a church undisclosed for security reasons several miles from their village.
“All in the family would stay sick all through the year,” said the woman. “When we started to believe in Jesus, we all started to heal.”
Since the family started attending church and all the relatives came to know about them, they “started to persecute us in every small and big way,” she said.
Her uncles began to stop them from cultivating the piece of land that belonged to their father.
“We refused to give up our faith, and now they have gone to the extent of attacking my mother to kill her and raping me,” the woman said. “Though they are my first cousins, sadly, they do not see me as their sister.”
Christian support organization Open Doors ranks India 11th on its 2025 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. India stood at 31st place in 2013 but has steadily fallen in the rankings since Narendra Modi came to power as prime minister.
Religious rights advocates blame the increasingly hostile rhetoric of the National Democratic Alliance government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which they say has emboldened Hindu extremists in India since Modi took power in May 2014.
