There are some horror stories told by low-caste people in the sub-continent.

Kalli Biswokarma was tortured by neighbours in her village in Nepal for two days and forced to eat human waste before she finally gave in and confessed to practising witchcraft.

Those who beat, punched and kicked the 47-year-old mother of one accused her of casting evil spells on a schoolteacher who had fallen ill.

"I was victimised because I am a poor woman," said Biswokarma, who belongs to the Dalit community -- the "untouchables" on the lowest rung of Nepal's rigid Hindu caste hierarchy.

"Around 35 people came to my home and took me away. They trapped me in a cow shed and forced me to eat faeces and drink urine," she told AFP in the village of Pyutar, 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Kathmandu.

"The next day they cut my skin with blades. I could not bear the torture and I confessed to being a witch just to save my life."

Hundreds of Dalit women are thought to suffer a similar ordeal every year in Nepal, where superstition and caste-based discrimination remain rife and where most communities still operate on strict patriarchal lines.

Human rights campaigners say the perpetrators of such crimes are rarely brought to justice, with police viewing the persecution of Dalit women as a matter for the community to sort out itself.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has pronounced 2010 the year to end violence against women as Nepal makes the transformation from traditional Hindu monarchy to modern secular state.