Every day hundreds of young women and little children are bought and sold as domestic help across India. In many cases, parents have no idea that their child might be raped, tortured and subjected to severe mental abuse. “Girls in bondage,” a multimedia feature, highlights the plight of young women and children who are lured by agents and end up as domestic labour in different cities in India. Women Talk Online spoke to CNN-IBN’s Priyali Sur, the journalist who uncovered the tragic stories of these victims.

A young girl in India resists her rapist, bombs in Pakistan’s Peshawar ruin Christmas for several locals, India and US seem to be inching towards a solution after a debate over an Indian diplomat’s treatment. Read more to know about the latest in women’s news.

Khobragade, second from left, has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.

Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, was arrested recently outside of her daughter’s Manhattan school on charges that she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national. Khobragade has claimed that she was treated like a common criminal and the news is creating waves in the Indian media, as are concerns about how the Indian government cares more about its more opulent citizens.

Aliaa Elmahdy became an icon of the Arab spring when she posted nude photographs of her online. Now, she is all set to wipe her past and begin her new life in Europe. Angela Merkel is set for four more years as the German Chancellor. This will be her third term. Samina Baig and her brother Mirza Ali conquer the Mount Aconcagua peak in Argentina. Read more on women who made it to the headlines.

Last week, an interesting post was doing the rounds in social media: 26 questions people from India are sick of answering. In the years I have been living abroad, I have been confronted with these questions over and over again. Do you speak ‘Hindu?’ Which caste do you belong to? But you actually pray to cows right?

As an afterthought, I thought one more question could be added to the list, the question that perhaps all Indians were confronted with in the year 2013: what is wrong with the men in your country? What about the ‘rape culture’ in India?. I have been repeatedly asked this question and I am always at loss for an answer. Where do I begin?

We’ve been hearing a lot about abuse and rape lately, and it’s good that way because women are finally opening up, talking against abuse and demanding justice against their perpetrators. Women Talk Online presents a special collection of interviews and blogs on abuse and rape and what women can do if they encounter someone who’s been through abuse or are unfortunate enough to experience abuse themselves. Take a look at some of our stories and interviews and tell us what you feel.

India’s sting operation ‘king’ Tarun Tejpal is behind bars following accusations of sexual assault, but India’s new rape laws seem to have ‘scared’ a lot of men. Recently, in an article called ‘Men under a state of seige,’ journalist Palash Krishna Mehrotra wrote that men were ‘frightened’ of the consequences of the new law. Mehrotra’s assertions have created a storm in the Indian media and in Twitter under the hashtag #MenunderSeige. Here are some excerpts from the online battle.