In a khap panchayat type treatment for marrying outside one’s community, a tribal girl from Birbhum district in Bengal was gang-raped allegedly on the orders of the village heads, police said adding 13 people had so far been arrested.
The 20-year-old victim who had married outside her community and refused to pay a fine as directed by the village headman who found her “guilty” for breaking social norms was made to pay for her defiance of the community elders who ordered their followers to gang-rape her.
The incident took place on Tuesday evening at labhpur, a notorious block known for political clashes and deaths.
The girl who was rescued in serious condition was undergoing treatment at Suri Hospital, police said adding about 12 people had taken turns in raping the woman.
Tuesday’s was the seventh such incident in the past three weeks or so after the Madhyamgram incident where a teenager was raped and set afire by her tormentors. Another woman was gang-raped in Kolkata inside a vehicle a couple of days ago.
The State had earlier seen rapes like the one that took place at Kamduni where a college girl was not only raped but her two legs were torn apart killing her instantly early last year.
Curiously the relatives of those arrested in the Kamduni case on Wednesday were ferried in a Government vehicle to the new Secretariat building Nabanna to submit a memorandum to the Chief Minister seeking unconditional release of the accused.