Mousini’s fate was a different kind of hell. She was not given to the mob. She was reserved for the mullah and his senior clerics. She was dragged to the mullah’s private chambers, a room that was opulently furnished but for a thick, blood-stained carpet on the floor. She was thrown onto her stomach. The mullah then took out a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, which he had taken from a ransacked home. He placed it on the small of her back.
“You Hindus worship this book, yes?” he asked, his voice a low growl. “You believe it gives you strength? We will see.”
He then proceeded to sodomize her, his full weight pressing the book into her spine with each brutal thrust. He forced her to recite Islamic prayers while he did it, hissing them in her ear, his spittle landing on her cheek. When he was finished, the other clerics took their turns, each one using her in a different, humiliating way. They made her clean them with her tongue. They made her thank them for “purifying” her. They forced her to watch videos of her daughter Tanisha’s gang rape on a large screen, laughing at her tears.
But the worst was saved for Shagun. The next morning, a broken and silent Mousini was brought to the courtyard. In the center was a small, ornate table, like a cake stand. Her daughter Shagun was brought out. She was naked, her head shaved, her brand a angry red welt on her small buttock. She was drugged, her eyes glassy and her movements limp. She was placed on the table on her back, her small legs spread wide and tied to the table’s legs.
The mullah addressed Mousini. “Your faith teaches you that the cow is sacred, yes? That its urine is holy?” He gestured to a man holding a large, rusty bucket. “We have collected the urine of our finest bulls for a week. It is a powerful concoction.”
He then grabbed a funnel. “We will baptize your daughter in the way of your own defilement,” he snarled. He forced the funnel into Shagun’s small, pre-pubescent vagina. Mousini screamed and fought, but two guards held her fast, forcing her to watch. The man slowly poured the foul, steaming liquid into the funnel. Shagun’s little body arched and convulsed, a guttural, choked sound escaping her lips as the acidic liquid filled her insides. The pain was unimaginable, a burning, bloating agony.
They didn’t stop there. The mullah then unzipped his trousers and, in front of the sobbing, broken mother, he raped the bleeding, burning child. One by one, the other clerics did the same. Shagun didn’t scream anymore. She just made small, pathetic, animal-like noises, her body twitching with each thrust, her mind shattered beyond repair.
After they were finished, Shagun was left on the table, a broken, bleeding toy. Mousini was thrown back into the prayer hall with the other women. Tanisha, catatonic and unresponsive, was left tied to the post. Their fate was sealed. They were no longer people. They were property. They were living monuments to hatred, their bodies to be used until they finally broke and were discarded into the unmarked pits behind the Madrassa, their souls extinguished in a hell of their captors’ making.