Sexual abuse of tribal girls in South Gujarat; "involvement" of well-organized mafia of politicians, cops, officials

By Nachiketa Desai*
A month ago, a tribal girl in Vyara, the district town of Tapi in South Gujarat, was molested by her employer, and a video of the act was circulated widely on social media. The person who captured the video was another tribal girl in the employ of the accused, who runs a non-government organization (NGO), which receives grants from the state government for running Mahila Sashaktikaran (women’s empowerment) programmes.
In a separate incident, last week, a 14-year-old lodged a first information report (FIR) with the Vyara police station against her 45-year-old employer for having raped her several times and threatened to kill her entire family if she opened her mouth. Initially the cops refused to act against the accused, who belongs to the family of a well-connected politician. The accused was finally arrested following complaints in Gujarat capital, Gandhinagar, which led the authorities to order action.
To any common person unfamiliar with the current goings-on in tribal areas of Gujarat, these two incidents may appear to be isolated cases. However, according to activists of an upcoming people’s organization among tribal farmers in South Gujarat, Adivasi Kisan Sangharsh Manch (AKSM), this is just a “tip of iceberg.”
AKSM, which has become a formidable force in the tribal districts of Tapi and Chhota Udepur, has been taking up tribal rights and environmental issues affecting the forest dwellers of the region. It has gained popularity for the fight which it has put up against the river sand mafia in Chhota Udepur and refusal to pay up tribal farmers’ dues for sugarcane sold to a cooperative sugar mill, run by powerful local politicians.
Say AKSM sources, a well-organized racket has come to stay in the tribal areas, whose sole is to push tribal girls into flesh trade. The racket has the support of several local politicians in connivance with government officials, including police, forest and those working in the tribal and social welfare department.
Says Romel Sutaria, AKSM president, flesh traders target teen-age tribal girls, who out of poverty come to towns in search of employment as house maids and in small business establishments.
“We have come across and exposed several cases whereby these hapless girls are supplied to local politicians for their ‘entertainment’ by the flesh traders, who operate under the cover of doing contract work for various government departments”, he alleges.
Often, say activists, the flesh trade mafia also finds tribal girls pursuing their studies residing in government-run hostels as their soft target. There have been cases when hostel wardens, mostly non-tribals from an urban centres, turn a blind eye to this, with a few of them even colluding with the mafia.
“The local police are not only reluctant to take complaints from the victims but in most cases treat the victims as criminals,” Sutariya says. “In both cases of molestation and rape in Vyara, the police harassed the girls by making them wait in the police station for hours before taking down their FIR,” he adds.
Says Sutariya, AKSM activists are “harassed because they seek to expose the established interests in the region”. Also running a campaign against the sand mining mafia, in Chhota Udepur district, the police sought to implicate Sutariya in criminal cases, which were set aside as false by the local district courts.
“The district officials even tried to paint the AKMS as an outfit of Maoists, though without much success. They have planted reports in local Gujarati newspapers about AKSM’s involvement in Naxalite activities, even though we believe non-violent methods of struggle,” Sutariya complains.
---
*Senior journalist based in Ahmedabad

Comments

Unknown said…

This is a very serious issue not only in Gujarat but all over country. in most of the cases police either support the perpetrators or indifferent. I wonder how would they feel and react if their daughters and sisters, mothers are raped?

September 30, 2015

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

India’s green energy push faces talent crunch amidst record growth at 16% CAGR

By Jag Jivan* A new study by a top consulting firm has found that India’s cleantech sector is entering a decisive growth phase, with strong policy backing, record capacity additions and surging investor interest, but facing mounting pressure on talent supply and rising compensation costs .

Search This Blog