For 15 years, as she moved from house to house for her family’s safety, Bilkis Bano waited for assurance from the courts that the men who gang-raped her and murdered many of her relatives would spend the rest of their lives in prison.
That finally came in 2017. In the years that followed, Bano said, she had been learning "slowly to live with my trauma” from the communal bloodshed that racked the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 and devastated her family. She and her husband were now ready to settle into a new home close to relatives and restart their business selling goats and buffaloes.
Then, this past week, the 11 perpetrators walked free, welcomed with sweets and garlands.