Why Men Rape: An Indian Undercover Investigation

by Tara Kaushal

The Doctor, who raped my friend, could be a hebephile and/or a sadist who saw an opportunity… *** Her story would evoke horror as an impersonal news item or even in fiction… this is the real-life story of one of my closest friends. I cried and brooded for days after she told me—so much for our ‘fun’ girls’ holiday. Cut to ten years later, when I started the research for this project. I called her in the States, where she’s a super-successful career woman with husband and child, and asked her if she would tell me the real name of The Doctor. There was a moment of silence. “I don’t want to go down that route, babe… I have only ever told you and —,” she said, taking the name of her husband. I reassured her, and she told me everything she remembered about him. In mid-2018, I tracked him down to Pune and convinced him to speak to me. As I expected at the outset, studying The Doctor was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, exacerbated by the recent death of my beloved mother-in-law.