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I found this book when I was clearing my bookshelves. I have no recollection of buying it, but I definitely did. And it must have been in India as the price on the back is in rupees.

I'm glad I found it.

Whilst some would think it might be a little bit dated - focussing as it does on events from 2011/2012, culminating in the shocking gang rape and beating of the girl on the bus - it's sad to say that this is still India today, was India centuries ago, and if nothing changes, will be India one hundred years from now.

The book follows three key stories that were reported on by the Wall St Journal. They are the killing of a Catholic nun in a rural community, the shocking abuse of a toddler in Delhi, and the killing of the girl on the bus. Each story is shocking without being unnecessarily graphic. I have read other accounts of the bus killing and I wish those other authors had perhaps pulled a few punches as some of those images are very hard to erase from the memory. All of these reports went in newspapers, and perhaps for that reason some of the shock-factor has been dialled down.

In the case of Sister Valsa, we see a strong woman, not afraid to stand up to big mining companies and to attempt to support a young rape victim. But women who stand up sometimes get cut down. Life is cheap for women in such places.

For Baby Falak, a toddler bitten and beaten by her 14-year-old carer, whose older partner 'bought' a daughter, the hundreds of millions of people praying for her recovery, whilst her birth mother, almost as much a victim as her baby, is many miles away in Rajastan, married off to a man who bought her because the availability of young women for wives was so low in his part of the country. Mother is lured away from her first husband, a violent abuser, by a charming stranger who says he wants to marry her and give her a good life in Delhi. She's passed between various people who attempt to get her into prostitution before selling her to a new (quite caring and kind) husband, but not without separating her from her three children.

And finally, we have the Delhi bus rape story, probably the one that more of the world knows about. In December 2012, a young physiotherapy student had been to the cinema with a friend and was waiting for a bus to take them both back to her district of Delhi. Lured onto a bus that wasn't in regular service, the pair were beaten severely, she was violently raped, and the pair were thrown out on the street naked. She survived long enough to be flown to Singapore for treatment before dying of her injuries.

The style of the book was a little confusing and inconsistent. The Sister Valsa story flowed, the baby Falak jumped about a little, but the bus rape story was presented as what seemed like a series of newspaper articles, with some repetition. The telling of the story doesn't matter - these women's deaths are so powerful that any change in style is just a minor irritation.

I am not going to comment on Indian society - there are many people better qualified than me to do that. I have been travelling there for nearly 30 years and it pains me deeply that so little seems to be improving in the country that I love.