A woman in Gujarat who was abducted and gang raped now has to go through the purification process. She is pregnant and wanted to abort the baby of rape. But the village courts of Gujarat ruled against the abortion because the fetus was mature.

 

Her in-laws didn’t allow her to come back to the house. Her husband left his parents to be with her. She also has two children from her husband. She draws comfort from her children and husband. Since she cannot abort the baby the court ordered her to go through a purification process.

 

Purification process is necessary for women in these villages if they have been raped or they are having an affair. It is a lie detector test.

In the ritual, the tantric asks the girl several questions and then checks if she is telling the truth by taking a pinch of barley seeds from a bag and asking her to say whether the number of seeds in his hand are even-numbered or odd.

If the girl gets the answer wrong then the tantric assumes her answers have been lies.

She then has to repeat the process with a 10-kg stone on her head. She has to keep the stone on her head until the tantric is satisfied that she is telling the truth.

If the accused female passes the barley test she is assumed to be innocent and nobody is allowed to trouble her.

As if going through rape wasn’t enough she now has to go through a baseless purification process, which may take months even years because all it requires is correctly guessing the number of barley seeds.

It’s just the women who go through the purification process; men are not subject to these rituals.