In her first public appearance since her ordeal, Orissa nun, Sr Meena, said she had been gang raped by forty men while police looked on.
"State police failed to stop the crimes, failed to protect me from the attackers, they were friendly with the attackers," Sister Meena told a news conference, News.com.au reports.
Her face covered by a black scarf, and scarcely looking at the cameras, she gave a blow by blow account of a case that has become emblematic of the religious violence that has rocked three states.
The nun's statement came two days after the Supreme Court denied her appeal to order a federal police probe into the case.
Nine people have been arrested so far, and an identity parade is ready to be set up, but the nun has refused to cooperate with Orissa police, saying she does not have faith in them.
One officer has already been suspended in the case for dereliction of duty.
In her statement, Sister Meena said she was dragged out of the house where she was sheltering by armed men who first threatened to decapitate her or burn her alive. She was then taken to a deserted building nearby.
"They pulled out my saree and one of them stepped on my right hand and another on my left hand and then a third person raped me on the verandah," she said.
After she was paraded to a nearby market she pleaded the police to help, but "they did not move", and later tried to stop her writing a full police complaint, asking her if she knew "what will be the consequence" of filing it.
Both India's central government and Christian leaders have accused the Orissa state government of turning a blind eye.
Orissa police came under fire for ignoring a medical report into the case that authorities said confirmed a rape took place.
On Tuesday, hundreds of women from the Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, a group that forms part of the hardline Hindu Sangh Parivar, staged a protest in Orissa's capital Bhubaneswar, demanding the nun be arrested for lying about her rape.
SOURCE
40 men gang-raped me, says nun Sister Meena (News.com.au, 20/11/08)
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