A 20-year-old Christian woman, Hindu parents, from central India, raped her and nearly killed her mother because of her faith in Christ, sources said.
“Since we began attending church six years ago, my father’s brother and his family have started persecuting us in any way possible,” the woman withheld as a victim of rape told Morningstar News.
She said she was sowing corn in the Kondagaon district of Chhattisgarh in the early morning hours of July 15th. Chintanag, his father’s brother, lives nearby, and comes to the field with his three sons and tells his 18-year-old sister and mother to stop growing the land.
The family relies on the land for living in a private village for safety reasons. Her mother told Naag that the land belonged to her late husband and she legitimately owns it and that he cannot stop her from working on it, she told her. In the heated debate that followed, she said the men threatened to kill them.
Naag’s three sons – Mukesh Dugga, Suresh Dugga and Lokesh Dugga, caught a 20-year-old woman with her hair and began dragging her to their home. Her mother tried to stop them, but Mukesh Daga attacked her with a spade (shovel), the victim said.
“One cousin smacked her mother on the head with an x and the second attacked her with a spade in her chest,” she said. “They slapped her repeatedly until she collapsed in her own pool of blood.”
Three Hindus dragged the 20-year-old woman into a nearby home.
“They dragged me into my hair, so no one came to save me and my sister was crying near my mother’s body,” she said.
The man took her into the room she said.
“Rokesh stood with an x and threatened to continue working with me because I was low or not, he would kill me,” she said, her voice shaking. “Suresh Dugga grabbed my neck and pressed my head against the floor, but Mukesh Dugga peeled my leggings off and raped me.”
After the rape, when the man was slightly distracted, the woman found an opportunity to escape. She headed straight to the nearby jungle, she said.
“My sister also joined me because she escaped with my upper clothes,” the woman said.
When the two women fled, the three men cried out at them and told them not to report the crime to police, she said.
“We just ran on our strength — we didn’t look back,” she said. “I don’t know how far we went, but it only stopped when we arrived at Danora Police Station.”
She said Mukesh Daga arrived at the station just after 10am while they reported the crime to police.
“He quickly admitted that we became Christians and he didn’t want to share his father’s property because he was not a Christian when he died. “Mukesh admitted to hitting my mother, but denied that he raped me.”
Police have registered formal complaints under the first information report #13 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 – “Announcement”, “Illegal Fuck”, “Gang rape”, “Causes Injury”, “Crime Threat”, “Attempt to Kill”, “Common Intent”.
Police arrested Mukesh Duga and as doctors from the local hospital were unable to provide medical tests for the rape victim, police asked the victim to return the next day for testing. Police then went to check on their injured mother, she said.
“I didn’t know if my mother was dead or still alive,” she told Morningstar News.
According to the first information report (FIR), police unconsciously discovered their mother and confiscated the weapon used by the attacker. Officers sent the seriously injured woman to a local hospital nearby. The family rushed her to Kondagaon Hospital, from which she went to Raipur.
“The doctor in Raipur said, “Take your mother home and don’t waste your time and money on her, she won’t survive.”
The doctor performed several surgeries on his mother. The attack destroyed her rib cage.
“The spade cut was very deep and it got damaged after reaching the liver,” the woman said. “Where the doctors found the clot, they put the pipes down and removed all the clots.”
The next day, police arrested NAAG and two other sons.
Demand for justice
Narendra Bhavani, founder of Chhattisgarh Yuba Manch and leader of the Indian National Congress Party, demanded justice from Christians at a press conference on August 6th in Kondagaon.
Bhavani told the Morningstar news that “the conflict over the land only arises due to the Christian faith of the family,” and that he demanded “compensation for the family, an indisputable right to build the land and security of victims of the district administration.”
A police letter dated August 29th to Christian families directs the police station to present land ownership documents.
More than two months after the incident, the injured mother is unable to leave her bed on her own.
“Because of the prayers of so many people, my mother began to consume oral food,” said the daughter, who moved for security reasons and attends her mother 24 hours a day.
Families who placed their faith in Christ six years ago are attending private churches for safety reasons several miles from the village.
“The whole family is sick all year round,” the woman said. “When we began to believe in Jesus, we all began to heal.”
She said as families began attending churches and all relatives began to know about them, they “started persecuting us on all the roads of big and small.”
Her uncles began to stop growing pieces of the land that they belonged to their father.
“We refused to give up on our faith, and now they’ve gone to the extent that they attacked my mother, killed her and raped me,” the woman said. “They are my first cousins, but sadly, they don’t consider me a sister.”
Christian support organization Open Door ranks 11th in India on the 2025 global watch list where Christians face the toughest persecution. India came in 31st in 2013, but has steadily fallen in the rankings since Narendra Modi took power as prime minister.
Defenders of religious rights have condemned the increasingly hostile rhetoric of the National Democratic Alliance government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, who said that since Modi came to power in May 2014, he has encouraged Hindu extremists in India.
