A woman who defied violent protests to worship at a centuries-old south Indian shrine that banned females of “menstruating age” has been spurned by her family, attacked by relatives and locked out of her home. On New Year’s Day, Kanakadurga, 39, along with Bindu Ammini, became the first women to enter the inner sanctum of Kerala state’s Sabarimala temple, one of the country’s holiest Hindu sites.

The supreme court had in September declared unconstitutional a customary ban on women aged between 10 and 50 from entering the temple, a hill shrine located at the end of a three-mile trek through dense mountainous forest. Kanakadurga, Ammini and hundreds of other women had attempted to reach Sabarimala once it reopened after September’s verdict but were turned away by sometimes violent protesters, mostly men, who see the court’s decision as inappropriate state intervention in a religious matter.

The pair – Kanakadurga, a government employee, and Ammini, a 40-year old law lecturer – entered the temple to pray with police protection in the early hours of 1 January. The same day, hundreds of thousands of women in Kerala formed a 380-mile human chain across the length of the state in support of gender equality.(theguardian)…[+]

PARIS – Singer Chris Brown said yesterday that a rape allegation against him was false, a day after the French prosecutor’s office said that he had been arrested in Paris with two other suspects. Brown, who is a U.S. citizen, has been released from police custody as authorities were still investigating the case, the French prosecutor’s office added.

The arrests were first reported by Closer magazine, which said Brown, his bodyguard and a friend were detained after a 24-year-old woman alleged she was raped at the singer’s suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on the night of Jan. 15. The woman said she had met the men at a Paris nightclub earlier in the evening, according to the magazine. “I wanna make it perfectly clear … This is false,” Brown said in a post on his Instagram account. “For my daughter and my family, this is so disrespectful and is against my character and morals.” Brown, 29, pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna, then his girlfriend, in 2009, an incident that made headlines around the world when a photo of her bruised face was released.(Reuters)…[+]

Four years in jail will be served by a husband who breached a protection order and beat his wife. Meetra Chaitram told the court that he did not hit her much but the 35-year-old mother of five said she was cursed at, hit in her head and other parts of her body and her hair was pulled out.

Chaitram, 46 of Debe, was charged with assault by beating and contravening a protection order. The charge was laid by constable Anderson Maingot of the San Fernando police station. Police prosecutor Cleyon Seedan told San Fernando magistrate Alicia Chankar that at 5.45 p.m. last Monday, Chaitram accused the woman of being unfaithful and dealt her blows to her head and body. Chaitram breached a protection order which was issued by the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court in 2016. It comes to an end on July 4 2019. Chaitram said it instructed that he was “not supposed to lash she or anything”. The woman was treated and discharged and a medical report was received.(Trinidad Express)…[+]