An unelected all male village
council in an Indian village, has ordered that two ladies, 23-year-old
Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister, be raped by several men each as punishment their brother ran off with a married woman.
In addition to their sentence,
the two sisters would also be paraded naked round the community with
blackened faces, an act of extreme humiliation in that country.
The
strange punishment was by Amnesty International which has launched a
petition calling on India's authorities to intervene immediately and
protect the two sisters, while urging concerned members of the public
all over the world to sign up a petition to save the girls and their
family who have fled their village in the Baghpat district, just outside
of Delhi.
According to reports in Indian media,
the sisters' brother, Ravi, fell in love with a girl from the Jat caste,
a higher social caste than Ravi and his family, who are Dalit, once
known as the 'untouchables', who are at the bottom of India's caste
system.
The Jat woman's family married her off to someone else in February but she later escaped and eloped with Ravi in March.
As
punishment, on July 31, a village council decided Ravi's sisters should
be raped to avenge his actions. Since the family fled their village
their home has been ransacked.
Sumit Kumar,
another brother of Meenakshi, told Amnesty that members of the Jat caste
were powerful members of the village council, saying:
'The Jat decision is final.'
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