His reasoning shocked people but this is the not the first time such logic has been applied by Indian judges. This logic holds that since an unwed mother and her child are "lepers" in Indian society, they are better off enjoying the "respectable" status of a married woman, even if the husband is her rapist. "The case before us is a fit case for attempting compromise between the parties...he [the rapist] should be enabled to participate in the deliberations as a free man and vent his feelings, open his mind and moorings. Where there is a will, there is a way," the judge has been quoted as saying. He added that another similar case was "proceeding towards a happy conclusion". In other words, wedding bells were ringing. Lawyers and women's groups have reacted with indignation but no one more so than Asha. In her garden in a village 80 km from the nearest town Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu - the area was devastated by the 2008 tsunami - she expresses incredulity and dismay. With only her hands shown on the video, she sounds like a schoolgirl but speaks confidently. "It is unfair of the judge to do this to me. The rapist only wants to get out of jail which is why he agreed to mediation. Can the judge guarantee my safety if he is in this area? Or my daughter's safety? I am being forced to suffer again. Only those who live around me know what I have been through," she says.

Asha was 14 when Mohan laced a soft drink with drugs and gave it to her to drink. When she fell into a stupor, he raped her. He threatened her parents when they filed a police complaint. He tried intimidating her into going for an abortion when he realised she was pregnant. A DNA test proved his guilt and he was sentenced to seven years in jail. The conservative community around them, including their own relatives, boycotted Asha and her parents. When she delivered a baby girl, their exclusion was total. After the death of her parents, Asha was left to raise the girl on her own with the help of her brother. Much of her anger against Justice Devadas is directed at his failure to consult her before proposing mediation aimed at marriage. "How can he do this without seeking my opinion?," she asks. A group of senior lawyers in Madras has written to the judge to protest against the proposal. On July 1, the Supreme Court waded into the controversy. While giving an opinion on another, similar case elsewhere in India, the judges condemned the idea of mediation in rape cases.

They said marriage between a rape victim and her rapist "compromised" the dignity of the woman and anyone suggesting it lacked sensitivity. Since most Indian women, especially the poor, have no status in society without a husband, they are occasionally made to comply with repulsive order cases either urged by judges to marry their rapist or, as in the 2008 case of Imrana, known by only one name, who was ordered to marry her rapist under Islamic law. Imrana, who was pregnant at the time, was raped by her elderly father-in-law. In their wisdom, Muslim clerics in her village, treating the case as adultery rather than rape, instructed her to divorce her husband and marry her father-in-law. Once she had done this, she had to treat her husband as her son. Imrana ignored their orders and continued living with her husband. For Rebecca Mammen John, a Supreme Court lawyer in New Delhi, Justice Devadas' marriage proposal betrays the same misogyny of the clerics in the Imrana case though with fewer mitigating circumstances given his position.

"A high court judge holds a constitutional post and when he passes an order which is so clearly misogynistic, he violates the Indian constitution in letter and spirit," she said. Far away, in a lush and verdant garden that seems to mock the poverty of her tiny hut and the nylon pink nightie she is wearing, Asha is determined to resist the judge's proposal. "I will fight this out my entire life. I will show my daughter the way I struggled and fought to survive," she said. (*) name has been changed to protect identities. Read also: