Gang rape was viewed by the entire village, children included

[jsr]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/West-Bengal-Gang-raped-on-a-platform-for-the-village-to-see/articleshow/29268518.cms

West Bengal: Gang-raped on a platform for the village to see
Dwaipayan Ghosh & Someswar Boral,TNN | Jan 24, 2014, 01.56 AM IST

SURI: Cops in Bengal's Birbhum district on Thursday arrested 14 men, including a village headman who had ordered the gang-rape of a 20-year-old tribal woman for alleged sexual relations with a man from outside her community. As tempers flared across the state and another anti-Mamata Banerjee wave over rising gender crime swelled, the chief minister replaced the district police chief C Sudhakar with Darjeeling SP S N Gupta.

Even as the administration claimed it had acted promptly, more gruesome details emerged. Villagers told TOI on Thursday that after the kangaroo court ordered her to be sexually savaged, the woman was placed on a raised bamboo platform so that the gang-rape was viewed by the entire village, children included.

"If the family does not pay up, go and enjoy yourselves," is what headman and now prime accused Boloi Murdy allegedly told the men.

The woman's family alleged she and her lover, a man from a nearby village, were tied up in Murdy's courtyard, where a kangaroo court was held and handed down the punishment — a Rs 50,000 fine for the man and gang rape for the woman. Some villagers told TOI that the woman's cries rent the air all night but no one stepped forward to help her. Even her family, who lives 50 metres away, could not rescue her.

[Boomerproud]

1. No words.

[geek tragedy]

2. i stand by my earlier comments about the proper fate of the village

The woman's family was not given even a night's time to arrange for the Rs 50,000. Once the headman ordered rape, it was a free for all. "Among those who raped her were teenagers and some old enough to be her father," said a villager, who was willing to depose to escape arrest. "Almost the entire village — including children — had joined the kangaroo court. All of them hailed it as the correct move," he said.

The village, 60km from Shantiniketan, the cultural and academic hub created by Rabindranath Tagore, is populated by adivasis and has no electricity or school. The administration has always been wary of interfering with tribal traditions, leaving the adivasis to live by their own laws. It saw a horrific humiliation of a teenage girl in 2010 for having an affair outside the tribe. She was paraded naked through four villages and anyone was free to grope her. Although it triggered outrage across the country, the Bengal government wasn't quite proactive. All the accused are out on bail.

Even on Thursday, a day after the gang-rape by up to 13 people, the village didn't show any hint of repentance. The women, in fact, barracked police, insisting the men had done nothing wrong and that the woman had to be punished. The women tried to stop police from arresting the accused and additional SP Prasanta Kumar Chowdhury had to rush in reinforcements. Journalists were barricaded until Santhal outfits intervened.

Give the village the same treatment that the Warren Jeffs compound got.

[redqueen]

6. You were right.

This is truly, truly horrific.

[lpbk2713]

3. One sick mofo

Murdy would be a republican if he lived in the USA.

[geek tragedy]

4. not one sick mofo--an entire village of barbaric mofos nt

[Shrike47]

5. The underlying article refers to the villagers as adivasis, so I looked that up.

The adivasis are the original inhabitants, or tribal people of India. They are a somewhat parallel to Native Americans or Austalian aborigines in that way, but of several different ethnic origins as, apparently, peoples from different places moved into the subcontinent. They seem to be marginalized as isolated people who are impoverished and outside of general Indian culture.

This doesn't excuse anything, I just find it interesting.

[redqueen]

7. It is good that the leader was replaced, but the problem goes much farther than that

if children watched this woman being brutalized, and the women of the village protected and defended the rapists.