A 14-year-old girl was dragged into a forest and raped on
the orders of a village council in remote eastern India in retaliation for a
sex assault blamed on her brother, her family, police said Friday.
Jitendra
Singh, a top local police official, said three men have been arrested. They
include the village headman and the main suspect, identified as the husband of
the woman who was allegedly molested by the victim’s brother.
“We kept begging them. We begged with folded hands
but they would not listen. They dragged her away to the forest,” she said.
The
attack took place after midnight on Sunday in a small village in Jharkhand
state’s Bokaro district. “They attacked her in retaliation and we are taking
this case very seriously,”
Singh said, adding that police expect to complete
the investigation and file charges in the next few days. Across much of rural
India, deeply conservative local councils wield great power.
They can pass
decrees on any subject they choose — from how women should dress to whether
young lovers deserve to live or die.
They usually enforce strict social norms
about marriage and gender roles. In January, a council of elders in West Bengal
state had ordered the gang rape of a 20-year-old woman as punishment for
falling in love with the man from a different community.
The village councils
are often the only practical means of delivering justice in areas where local
governments are either too far away or too ineffective to settle disputes.
Their power is often derived from the fact that they can order that villagers
be ostracized for ignoring their decrees. In some of the most extreme cases,
the councils have sanctioned so-called honor killings, usually against men and
women suspected of out-of-wedlock sex or marrying outside the community. -
FOXNews
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