Maajida* quivers as she describes the hell she has endured since her wedding day.

At just 17 she was married off to a lorry driver living in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Little did she know that barely a month into her marriage she would also be expected to act as a wife for two of her husband’s other brothers and, when she refused, would be raped and assaulted.

“They come on different days, they have their turns, they have their days,” the slight young woman told the Telegraph.

The district of Baghpat where she lives is widely considered to be the epicentre of the Indian gender imbalance crisis that the United Nations warned in 2014 had reached “emergency proportions”.

A preference for sons over daughters meant there were only 856 females to 1,000 males in Baghpat, according to the 2011 Indian government census.