Skye Arundhati Thomas

In May 2014, the bodies of two teenage girls were found hanging from the branches of an old mango tree in the Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh. The nooses had been fashioned from their own dupattas. Relatives and neighbours from nearby villages came to the orchard in solidarity and mourning. The police arrived, but the families refused to let them cut the bodies down. They wanted to wait for the news vans. The girls belonged to the Shakya caste, which in Uttar Pradesh means significant economic and social disadvantage: only if the national news cycle picked up the crime, the family thought, was there any hope of the crimes receiving a federal, and therefore reliable, investigation. ‘If we bring down the bodies,’ one family member said, ‘the matter will end in the village.’