A seven-year-old deaf and mute girl with injuries all over her legs and arms narrated her ordeal before a magistrate in Muzaffarpur last month. A fellow inmate translated her frantic signs into numbing words for the judge, detailing sexual assault on her. She was among the youngest victims of what has come to be known as Bihar’s ‘house of horrors’,...

Assam accommodates more than 50 different tribal, semi-tribal, and plain land ethnic groups, as well as several religions. According to the 2011 census, 61.47% of Assam’s population were Hindus, 34.22% were Muslims, and Christians were 3.7%. Hindus are predominant here, and the religion is playing the leading role in uniting many ethnic groups against a made-up enemy — Muslims.  In...