A spate of exceptionally brutal rapes in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh has shocked India. Many of the victims were young girls.
Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state with 200 million people. It is also home to a staggering number of poor - official statistics show more than 60 million people here live on less than $1.25 (75p) a day . Poverty also makes a community more vulnerable. Many victims were raped or assaulted when they went to the fields because, like millions of Indians, they have no access to toilets at home.
Uttar Pradesh has always had a high rate of crime, but it is the viciousness of the recent attacks that has stunned people most. "These cases are so brutal that we wouldn't have believed that they could happen - we thought such things could happen only in novels and films," Mrs Vera says.
SR Drapery, vice-president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Uttar Pradesh, says most of the rape victims are poor women and girls in remote villages. Many, he says, are low-caste Dalits (formerly known as "untouchables").
"I analysed the rape figures for 2007 and I found that 90% of victims were Dalits and 85% of Dalit rape victims were underage girls," he says. "It is well known that until not very long ago, in certain areas of the state's southern Bundelkhand region, new brides of Dalit farmhands had to sleep with their rich, high-caste landowners on their wedding night." Mr Drapery says the practice no longer exists - but Dalit women and girls remain vulnerable to predators.