Does the punishment always fit the crime? A 20-year-old eastern Indian woman was gang-raped by 13 men because of orders from the village court. The rape was considered punishment for having a relationship with a man from a different community.
Police reported that her partner was tied up in the village square, while the rape happened in a mud house. After this horrific crime on January 20 in the Birbhum district of West Bengal, the woman is recovering in a hospital.
The woman was not only sentenced to multiple rapes, but ordered to pay a fine of 25,000 rupees ($400) for carrying on a relationship with a man that she loved.
"We arrested all the 13 men, including the village chief who ordered the gang rape. The accused have been produced in court which remanded them to jail custody," reported Birbhum's Superintendent of Police, C. Sudhakar, to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
India has been in the news repeatedly over the last several years because of brutal assaults and numerous reports of multiple women being gang-raped. The laws on sex crimes have undergone revision and scrutiny, especially after the fatal gang rape of a physiotherapist in December 2012 on a bus in Delhi.
Just last week, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped in central Delhi after asking for directions. And earlier this month, a 16-year-old girl, from West Bengal’s capital, Kolkata, was gang-raped and later murdered.
There is little action being done to protect Indian women against multiple crimes including rape, kidnapping, sexual harassment and molestation.
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