Sisters gang-raped, hung from tree in India

[Jazzy]

Authorities in northern India said Thursday that they have arrested three men, including two police officers, suspected of gang-raping and killing two teenage sisters before hanging their bodies from a mango tree, sparking renewed public outrage over sexual violence in the country.

Villagers found the girls' bodies hanging from the tree Wednesday morning, hours after they disappeared from fields near their home in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, police Superintendent Atul Saxena said. The girls, who were 14 and 15, had gone into the fields because there was no toilet in their home.

Autopsies confirmed the girls had been gang-raped and strangled before being hung, Saxena said.

The villagers accused the chief of the local police station of ignoring a complaint by the girls' father Tuesday night that the girls were missing. The station chief has since been suspended.

The family belongs to the Dalit community, also called "untouchables" and considered the lowest rung in India's age-old caste system.

Records show a rape is committed every 22 minutes in India, a nation of 1.2 billion people. Activists say that number is low because of an entrenched culture of tolerance for sexual violence, which leads many cases to go unreported. Women are often pressed by family or police to stay quiet about sexual assault, experts say, and those who do report cases are often subjected to public ridicule or social stigma.

Last month, the head of Uttar Pradesh state's governing party told an election rally that the party was opposed to the law calling for gang rapists to be executed.

"Boys will be boys," Mulayam Singh Yadav said. "They make mistakes."

Source

Your reaction to what Mulayam Singh Yadav said ( in bold text )?

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

Um, no. That saying does not apply to this situation. They need to be executed for what they did to those poor girls.

 

[DrLeftover]

Well, at least in most of India they don't usually execute rape victims for having sex outside of marriage.

They have a more sensible approach to it:

09/06/2013

Police in northern India launched an investigation into a Rajasthan village council this week following reports that the members ordered a 6-year-old rape victim to marry the son of her alleged attacker.

According to the Indo-Asian News Service, police said the young girl was raped by a 40-year-old man in her Kota neighborhood about two weeks ago. After the fact, a "panchayati" council in the state convened and reportedly instructed the child's parents to wed her to the accused's 8-year-old son.

The 6-year-old was reportedly raped again Wednesday by the same attacker while both sides were negotiating the marriage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/05/child-rape-victim-forced-marry-attacker-son_n_3875754.html

 

[Bluezone777]

I hardly call forcing yourself on a woman a "mistake". One only needs to ask if they would like to have someone force themselves on them to know it's wrong. You don't need a science textbook to figure that one out.

When you are that divorced from reality, I don't think there is any hope for you. You have a culture that's so divorced from reality that the best thing to do is find a way to pack it up and leave. When India becomes a country devoid of women is perhaps the day they might realize the foolishness of their ways but I would think it would be a too late to say sorry at that point.

 

[DrLeftover]

"Divorced from reality"

No. It is a different reality. A totally alien concept to most in the West.


CNN had this take on it.

May 30, 2014
...

It wasn't immediately clear whether India's entrenched caste system, which continues to cause prejudice and persecution in some rural areas, played a role in the attack. Rathore, the police official, said that the victims and the suspects belonged to different low caste groups.

Zainab Salbi, the founder of Women for Women International, pointed out that "violence against women is a global issue," not limited to developing countries.

But Salbi told CNN that in many Asian and Middle Eastern countries, "the concept of women as property is still a common thing," meaning they don't get treated as equal human beings.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/world/asia/india-gang-rape/

 

[DrLeftover]

1 June

...
Meanwhile, reports say another woman has been found dead after being gang-raped elsewhere in the state.

The body of the woman, thought to be 22, was discovered on Saturday in the Baheri area, the Press Trust of India reported quoting police sources.

A post mortem revealed she had been forced to drink acid before she was strangled.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27659446

 

[DrLeftover]

It is still happening.

12 June

A teenager has been found hanging from a tree in a village in northern India, the fourth woman to die in such a way in recent weeks in Uttar Pradesh state.

The family of the 19-year-old say she was raped. A post mortem is under way.

It comes just one day after a woman's body was found hanging from a tree in a remote village elsewhere in the state.

The gang rape and murder of two girls found in similar circumstances last month sparked outrage. Correspondents say more cases are now being reported.

Such attacks have long taken place in Uttar Pradesh, reports the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi, but recent outrage over sexual violence has meant that every case is being reported to police and getting media coverage.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27807539