A woman’s innocent temple visit was misread as child trafficking

Evidence

The village of Athimoor in Tamil Nadu is a sleepy temple town, with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants, that lies within the southernmost part of India. On 8 May 2018, sixty-five-year-old Rukmani and her family were travelling to the district from the state’s capital, Chennai, to visit their family temple. At one point, they stopped the car and decided to give out chocolates to some local children. As they looked around, they asked an elderly lady for directions. Unbeknownst to them, the woman subsequently told the rest of the village that Rukmani and her family must be the child traffickers they had all been warned about. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 319