"Survivors are threatened, face violence, their families are ostracized and there is extreme pressure to stay silent," Manisha Mashaal, founder of the Dalit rights group, Swabhiman Society, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "To access justice, survivors have to put their lives at risk and endanger their families as well." "Dalit women's bodies are being used to assert caste supremacy and keep women 'in their place'," Jacqui Hunt, Eurasia Director of women's rights group, Equality Now, said in a statement. But one 28-year-old survivor said her family were being harassed by a man who raped her in 2018 after she rejected his advances. "Even before I could recover from the trauma of what had happened, his family and other upper caste men were at our doorstep," said the woman.

Source: Dhaka Tribune November 25, 2020 10:18 UTC