Updated: February 28, 2021 08:43 IST Digging into the 2014 Badaun rape and murder case, Sonia Faleiro found a different story altogether, a story that predates the victims’ lives Share Article AAA Digging into the 2014 Badaun rape and murder case, Sonia Faleiro found a different story altogether, a story that predates the victims’ lives Goa-born, London-based author and journalist Sonia Faleiro is out with her second book of reportage, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, which was released last month in India. Combining reportage with the narrative skills of a fiction writer, The Good Girls documents the 2014 gang rape and murder of two minors in Katra Sadatganj — an “eyeblink of a village” in Uttar Pradesh’s Budaun district — where land is power, security and identity. And where a girl’s life is “everyone’s business”. In Katra Sadatganj and its neighbouring hamlets, honour killings are common — girls are killed for marrying outside their caste, religion, even for having engaged in premarital sex. The rape and murder of 16-year-old Padma Shakya and 14-year-old Lalli Shakya (not their real names) — cousins as alike as “two grains of rice” — shocked the country at a time when the Nirbhaya case was still fresh in public memory.