The gruesome rape and hanging of two teenage girls in the populous Uttar Pradesh state again proves how women have become the biggest victims of India’s sanitation crisis. The two girls were going to the fields to defecate when they went missing on Tuesday night. Nearly half-a-billion Indians – or 48% of the population – lack access to basic sanitation and defecate in the open. The situation is worse in villages where, according to the WHO and Unicef, some 65% defecate in the open. And women appear to bear the brunt as they are mostly attacked and assaulted when they step out early in the morning or late in the evening. Several studies have shown that women without toilets at home are vulnerable to sexual violence when travelling to and from public facilities or open fields. The evidence is glaring.

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