Christian women from Chingavaram village who say they were beaten up on the night of November 24.
Our first glimpse of Chingavaram, a village in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, was in the dark. It was early evening on November 28. The village was quiet and apparently peaceful. A youth sat in the verandah of the local grocery shop, browsing on his mobile.
“Yes, there was some trouble three nights ago,” he told us, pointing down the road. “The Christian houses are there.”
We found no one there except for a few old women.
The attack
The next morning, we spent two hours with influential members of the village: the sarpanch-pati, or the powerful husband of the female head of the panchayat, the patel, or the village headman, the son of the pujari, the village priest, and a teacher. We also met a leader of the Koya samaj, a tribal body, from the neighbouring village and a few others.