Before getting into her tuktuk Talat gives it a thorough clean, sweeping every last speck of dust from the interior and polishing the glass and metal with vigour.

The pride she feels in her taxi is obvious and understandable; Talat is the first – and only – female auto rickshaw driver in the city of Bhopal in central India.

It’s an achievement made all the more remarkable given her story. At age 23, Talat was sent 500km from home to marry a man her family had been introduced to through a family friend. She and her mother, Firoza, were assured he was from a good family but just a few weeks after the wedding, it became abusive.

First there were arguments about her dowry – a practice that has been officially outlawed in India since 1961 – followed by regular beatings.

When Talat came home five months into the marriage she was a shadow of the lively girl she once was and told her mother she couldn’t go back.

Her unhappy story is far from unusual in a country where official statistics show that a third of married women have experienced domestic violence. That compares to seven per cent in the UK.