Chechen Muslims strip, humiliate, and savagely beat a pregnant woman for an alleged affair with a Russian soldier

The humiliation of Malika Soltayeva, a Chechen woman suspected of adultery, was ferocious and swift.

Times of India Soltayeva, 23, had been away from home for a month and was reported missing by her family. When she returned, her husband accused her of infidelity and banished her from their apartment. What followed was no investigation. In a law enforcement compound in this town in east-central Chechnya, the men who served as Argun’s police sheared away her hair and her eyebrows and painted her scalp green, the colour associated with Islam. A thumb-thick cross was smeared on her brow. Soltayeva, a Muslim, had slept with a Christian Russian serviceman, they said. Her scarlet letter would be an emerald cross. She was forced to confess, ordered to strip, and beaten with wooden rods and hoses on her buttocks, arms, legs, hands, stomach and back.