Woman Is Gang-Raped on Order of Village Council in India

[cali]

NEW DELHI — A young woman in West Bengal was gang-raped this week on the order of a village council, to punish her for planning to marry a man from outside the village, according to Indian police.

Thirteen people have been arrested in the case, including the village chief who both ordered and participated in the rape, according to Suraja Pratap Yadav, a police officer in the Birbhum district of West Bengal in eastern India.

The episode began on Monday when Khaliq Sheikh, the man from a different village, asked the young woman to marry him, and she accepted his proposal, the police said. When Balai Mardi, the chief of the village, heard about it, he quickly sought to block the marriage.

According to local news media accounts, villagers went to the young woman’s house and detained Mr. Sheikh, and the next day, he and the young woman were taken to the village square, tied to separate trees and accused of breaking tribal rules

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/world/asia/woman-is-gang-raped-on-order-of-village-council-in-india.html?_r=0

[geek tragedy]

1. I predict that someone will

show up in this thread blaming Pakistanis for this story, one way or another . . .

Blech on this story, if I were in charge I would probably order the entire village razed and its inhabitants scattered, so probably a good thing I am not in charge.

[enlightenment]

6. Why would they blame Pakistan?

Am I missing something?

What we should be looking at is a refusal by many rural regions in India to come into the 20th century (much less the 21st).

[geek tragedy]

8. there's a certain

someone around here who attempts to blame every bit of bad news regarding India on Pakistan--will claim that Pakistanis actually committed the crime, etc.

Once accused me of being part of a Pakistani conspiracy.

[enlightenment]

23. Ah - I missed that.

What nonsense.

[Dorian Gray]

40. Bizarre!

[redqueen]

17. Why would you raze the village?

Seriously, what is that about?

[geek tragedy]

20. when this kind of evil, this kind of anti-woman bigoted evil, is so

entrenched in the fabric of a community that this sort of thing is viewed as appropriate and bears the stamp of the community's official authority, that community is beyond redemption. All of the localized institutions are corrupted to the point where they need to be excised--much like a gangrenous limb.

The entire community raped this woman. They were all in on it in one way or another.

Cf. the Warren Jeffs compound.

[redqueen]

22. I don't know that the community approves.

The chief does. The worst of the men do. But other men? The women? The children?

IMO we are seeing an increase in comments that border on demonizing an entire country, and obviously entire communities, in threads discussing rapes in India. It's disturbing.

[geek tragedy]

26. the story says that villagers grabbed her, and that the village council made the order.

generalizations on a country of 1 billion are obviously misplaced. But, here this appears to be a community effort--they were tied up in public in the middle of the village square.

No one stood up and said this was wrong.

this wasn't a cop abusing his authority in a crime of opportunity. it was the entire power structure of the village participating. How can an entity be of any good when it's entire power structure is pure evil?

Also, this:

Sunil Soren, a tribal leader from a nearby village, insisted in a telephone interview that people in the area “respect our women a lot.” But he said that Mr. Sheikh and the young woman were “in an objectionable situation,” and that such incidents “pollute the minds of youngsters.”
“In the excitement, some wrong things happened,” Mr. Soren said.
Village councils are common in rural India, particularly among populations that are considered tribal, among the poorest groups in the country. The councils often enforce strict codes of conduct, and in some cases are deeply involved in deciding who will marry whom. Councils are often worried that marriages to outsiders will dilute communal land claims, among other concerns. Couples who defy the tribal marital codes are sometimes murdered. Genetic researchers have found that India’s population has hundreds of distinct sub-groups, in part because village councils have been enforcing marital codes and limiting intermarriage for centuries.

In order to smash the patriarchy, sometimes you have to actually smash it.

[redqueen]

29. Yes, villagers, but not all of them.

I simply refuse to condemn the entire village as complicit without convincing evidence. Vague wording in an article does not cut it.

He threatened to burn down her family's home if they tried to take the matter to the police. I think it is only logical that in this likely impoverished village, there is not a lot of support for dissident voices. For one thing, we don't know for a fact that no one objected. For another, there is likely immense pressure on anyone who objects to keep quiet.

Scattering a village of impoverished people, whom we're just going to assume were fine with this, is smashing the patriarchy? Not in my opinion.

[geek tragedy]

31. you could very well be right. just relaying my gut reaction that this is more like the

FLDS compound with the FLDS running the entire government than anything.

[sir pball]

37. Make an example out of this village, and maybe the dissenters will take action in the next one.

There may not have been explicit agreement involving everybody in the village, but their silence speaks volumes. Pressure notwithstanding, is there really an excuse for closing the door and shaking one's head upon seeing this?

The Indian government (not White people) needs to make it crystal-clear that this is completely intolerable in a civilized society; the people responsible probably don't give a flying fig about sanctions or fines or strongly worded letters - direct, unmistakable action needs to be taken. As in the entire tribal council should be at the very least locked away for a long time, or publicly impaled, and perhaps yes, the village burned, razed and the earth salted. While they watch.

The relative innocents can be paid off, given someplace else to live, but sad to say I kind of agree.

Don't bother replying; I'm literally on the way out the door to work and won't be here for the next 12 hours.

[lapislzi]

30. Until human life is assigned greater worth than property, incidents like these will continue.

In the mind of the council, one person must be made an example of. Unfortunate, but expendable.

I may be second-guessing the motivations here, especially given the overweening culture of misogyny in India (and everywhere else where patriarchy is the norm; so, pretty much...everywhere), but the comment about land claims resonated strongly with me. There was a motive here. A fucked-up one, to be sure, but a justification (in the minds of the misogynists) all the same.

[Dorian Gray]

41. And her family

who went to the police, are a part of this community.

Razing is not the answer, nor is demonizing all of India. (As you point out so well.)

[geek tragedy]

46. They will have to relocate anyways

For a number of reasons, not the least of which being that their neighbors gang-raped their daughter. She's not ever going to be safe there, and neither will they.

[roguevalley]

49. the rapes coming out of india are deeply disturbing. they are rapes of

annihilation. fifteen men raping a danish tourist. girls being forced to marry their rapists. THere is something deeply disturbing here and it cannot be denied. I don't get it. I am appalled. What can be done?

[LittleBlue]

32. Raze the village? Woooah hold on there, Lord Clive

White people deciding to raze villages full of brown people is an ugly element of colonialism.

The 18th century has come and gone. Prosecute the offenders, but forget collective punishment of foreign natives. That is a very old and painful form of racism that you shouldn't be repeating.

[geek tragedy]

33. As I've said before, to me this is like the FLDS/Warren Jeffs thing.

This doesn't happen in a place that isn't rotten to the core. I was all for what the authorities did to the FLDS rape cultists.


Also, send a message to the thousands of other villages that they will need to not do this sort of thing if they want to maintain their way of life.

[LittleBlue]

34. What I'm trying to impress upon you is that

a white person saying "raze the village" in regions like India, Africa and South America are equivalently painful to white people burning crosses in the yards of blacks in the US. It has a horrible historical connotation that you may not have been aware of.

That was an old collective punishment for natives when they rejected white, Christian notions of good and evil.

[geek tragedy]

35. As stated earlier, such inclination means it's probably

a good thing I'm not in a position to make such distinctions. We'll see how well the criminal justice system handles this.

[geek tragedy]

71. the village is a cesspool of evil. a village of rapists and rape accomplices

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024384227

it isn't collective punishment when all are guilty

the proper way to deal with a cesspool is to completely drain it

[lapislzi]

43. The earth will be salted, and soon enough.

http://www.onearth.org/articles/2013/07/bangladesh-troubled-garment-industry-and-why-we-need-to-support-it

Yes, above article is about India's next-door neighbor, but close enough to Bengal to be relevant. There will be no way of village life soon as sea levels rise. The ignorant and the parochial are caught in the cross hairs of climate change. I am sure it's terrifying and will lead to further incidents of barbarity and brutality.

The desire to hold onto the land at all costs through the use of dyed-in-the-wool misogyny is what's behind this barbarism.

[shenmue]

2. This is a nightmare

I'm sorry, but some people just deserved to be killed. That is some evil shit.

[quinnox]

3. WTF

Now they order gang rapes? India seems to be one fucked up country lately.

[redqueen]

19. The entire country didn't order, or participate in, these rapes.

That chief, and the rapists, are fucked up. The country is huge, and there are many people there who are just as sickened by the rampant misogyny there.

[snooper2]

38. Do you think the rape culture is worse in the U.S. or India?

This would actually make a good poll question but I'll wait for your thoughts....

[Throd]

63. I'll go with India.

[roguevalley]

60. what kind of "man" would obey?

[redqueen]

61. There are men in every country who participate in gang rapes.

So, a man inclined to rape would happily obey.

[MoonRiver]

27. It is. I was there 13 months ago when the infamous Delhi gang rape and murder happened.

While there were protests all over Delhi and general outrage, many leaders across the country talked about how girls "had it coming" because they were wearing Western clothes and not the traditional Indian attire.

Could hardly believe what I was seeing and hearing from India's leaders, some women!

[laundry_queen]

50. Yeah, that's pretty much the attitude there

I had a friend from India that had come here to marry a Canadian. She was, first of all, shunned for that decision. But then when she went through a divorce, she longed to go back but knew she couldn't...because of those type of attitudes. She said she's a very friendly person and because of that she was always accused of being 'loose' (there's a term for it in India, she said that basically means slut) when she lived in India, because Indian women aren't supposed to be friendly - it means they have bad morals or something. She knew it would be quite a bit worse when they found out she was divorced. So she stayed in Canada.

[Jesus Malverde]

4. What in the world???

[jsr]

5. "Local politicians react angrily to the publicity given to rape cases

which they believe reflect badly on their administration."

I bet this crap is under-reported.

[DevonRex]

45. "lashed out at rape victims last year, saying in one case that a victim was lying,"

Whole quote:

" The chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, lashed out at rape victims last year, saying in one case that a victim was lying, even though police found evidence supporting the victim’s account."

[TwilightGardener]

7. Hey, though, did you hear about the Indian diplomat who was patted down in a jail cell?

LOL, this is why India continues to be ridiculous.

[redqueen]

9. India is an enormous, extremely diverse country.

This is a horrific tragedy, and I hope all those responsible not only face severe punishments, but also eventually come to understand the horror they have participated in.

BUT

Comments like 'raze the village' or 'India is a fucked up country' are fucking offensive. Just saying.

[cali]

12. I agree. I simply posted the story. why direct your comment at Me?

Of do YOU think the story shouldn't be posted? If that's the case, I disagree. If not, you should direct your criticism for those who engaged in that rhetoric which I most certainly did not do.

thank you.

[redqueen]

16. I replied to the OP but my comment was intended for the people who have been posting similar shit

in other threads about rape cases in India, and the ones who haven't yet done so in this thread. I guess I was hoping to see fewer of those types of replies.

You just posted a story and didn't say those things, but other posts in this very thread said similar things. I didn't think it was that cryptic, really.

On edit, I'm going back and addressing the posts themselves. I'll delete these if you think it appropriate to do so.

[lapislzi]

28. Ignorance and parochialism are what's "fucked up" about this tragedy

(aside from it being a brutal, barbaric rape). Those afflictions are what brought about the conditions in which such a horrific act could take place with the sanction of the community.

No one country has a lock on any of that. There's plenty to go around.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. Well, I can see why she wanted to marry outside of her village.

[stevenleser]

44. Thread's over, you win. Absofrigggggginglutely. If I was her I would too... nt

[uppityperson]

51. Indeed. eom

[cinnabonbon]

11. oh my god.

What a bunch of vicious, callous assholes.

[marmar]

13. Jeezus. No words.

[JaneyVee]

14. Fuck ever visiting there. I'm boycotting India.

[In_The_Wind]

15. This is horrible!

Mr. Mardi ordered the couple to pay fines totaling 27,000 rupees, or about $442, Mr. Yadav said in a telephone interview. Mr. Sheikh paid his portion and was allowed to leave, but when the young woman’s family refused to pay, Mr. Mardi ordered villagers “to enjoy her,” said a police officer who spoke on condition that he not be named.
She was then raped repeatedly in Mr. Mardi’s mud-and-thatch hut, according to local media reports.
Mr. Mardi told the young woman and her family that if they reported the rapes to the police, the village elders would burn their house down, Mr. Yadav said.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. The most unusual thing about this atrocity is that it made the headlines.

:- Things like this happen frequently.
:- India is doing badly at tackling rape.
:- Even if India were doing massively better than any other nation at tackling rape, it's so big that things like this would still happen fairly frequently.


There are over a billion = 10^9 people in India.

Even if only one woman in a hundred = 10^2 were ever raped (and that's probably more than one order of magnitude than is the case in Western countries, which probably have less rape than India), that would still be 300-400 rapes every day. Given the optimism in that estimate, there are actually probably *thousands* of rapes in India every day.

Recently, the media has decided to run a series of "gang rape in India" human interest stories in a row, suggesting that 3 or 4 incidents in a country of a billion souls amount to evidence of an epidemic.

The truth is that there is evidence that India *does* have significantly more rapes per capita per year than many other nations (although probably fewer than some others).

But never, ever base your opinions on crime on individual atrocity anecdotes, rather than on data.

[get the red out]

21. Can't say anything about this

The US is always the worst, ALWAYS. Must never malign any developing nation concerning women's rights, ever. That's just not to be tolerated.

[redqueen]

24. Who said the US is the worst?

[get the red out]

52. Well France then

or some other European country. The developing world must never be taken to task.

[Ash_F]

47. Just because the US has a higher per capita rape rate, doesn't mean India has no problems.

It is a global problem that must be tackled with a global movement.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

53. What's your source for that claim?

It strikes me as highly surprising, and I wonder if you're confusing rates of reported rape with rates of rape?

[Ash_F]

54. Sure. It surprised me too.

Here are the rates
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/01/02/are-women-safer-in-india-or-the-u-s/
The same source says report rate in India is only 10%

http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
This source says the report rate in the US is 40%. Which is much better, but when you crunch the numbers for a estimated real figure, the US is still way higher. As detailed in the post below.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=702942

When this was brought up in the other thread, the poster and some others got real defensive(I guess towards America), but that isn't really helping anybody.

These horrific stories coming out of India deserve international attention and I by no means think they should be minimized. Maybe if they get enough attention, that will spur change. But it is worth noting that America still has a higher rape rate. It just exemplifies that we have a real bad problem too.

Here's another one to to think about: In America the reporting rate of college rapes is less than %5, even lower than India's. It kind of blows my mind.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/advice/tips/why-most-victims-dont-report-rape

[Donald Ian Rankin]

55. The important thing to remember about these numbers is that they're essentially made up.

For example, "Ms. Sundararaman estimates from her field experience that only about one in 10 rapes get recorded in India."

India is a country of one billion people. One woman's guess based on her field experience tells you pretty much nothing - for one thing, the reporting rates may vary wildly from one part of the country to another.

There just isn't any data worth a damn here, on either side.

My guess, for what it's worth, is that there are more rapes per capita per year in India than the US, but the operative word there is guess; likewise, anyone who presents a claim to the converse as data-based rather than pretty much pure guesswork is trying to pull a fast one.

[Ash_F]

62. Good points, but the best we can do is surveys and research.

Guesses based on whatever other subjective reasoning one might have are even less likely to be accurate.

[DevonRex]

64. U.S. rate would decline if people threatened to burn the victims'

houses down if they reported their rapes to the police.

[Ash_F]

65. See post #54 /nt

[DevonRex]

66. Bullshit. In a country where village elders order gang rape?

And it's normal? Bullshit.

[Ash_F]

67. As Obama said "rape is rape"

While this case is really cruel, so are all rapes. Drugging a girl at a frat party and gangraping her is also cruel.

As for the surveys, they come from 3 different women's rights organizations. Are women fighting against rape "bullshit"?

[lapislzi]

25. The "motive" is buried several paragraphs down:

"The councils often enforce strict codes of conduct, and in some cases are deeply involved in deciding who will marry whom. Councils are often worried that marriages to outsiders will dilute communal land claims, among other concerns."

It's all about land claims in a part of the world with rapidly shrinking resources. Transgressors must be made an example of, to deter others from defecting. A woman's life, or even several people's lives, is a small price to pay to protect property ...sound familiar? Property trumps all.

I heard this reported on NPR this morning and had to pull over because I found myself screaming and weeping uncontrollably (trigger much?).

[Rex]

36. How barbaric.

However I am not that surprised, since India still lives under a medieval caste system. I would think their younger generations are appalled by such a barbaric act and would hope to change toward a more progressive social system. Maybe one in which women are not considered objects to be married off to whoever has the largest amount of money.

[Dorian Gray]

39. DISGUSTING!

Horrific and enraging.

[iandhr]

42. No words describe.

[JI7]

56. i wonder what type of areas many of the other rapists have come from

if more tend to come from these backward type places.

this is not to say the "better off" don't rape .

but maybe there is an increase in recent years from certain backward areas or people who come from these areas and go into other places. some of the recent reports of the gang rapes described the rapist as "vagrants" which in india seems to be used for guys who are just hanging around and moving through the area without a "purpose" .

anyways, india should be doing something to make sure these areas aren't left and allowed to do as they wish . it will always be the women who get it the worst.

there shouldn't be a fucking "village chief" anywhere or a "village council" .

[JI7]

57. i wonder if this would work

[JI7]

58. it was because the guy she was seeing is a Muslim

"Khaliq sheikh" is a muslim name so i was wondering if that could be it and looked it up and there are many saying that is the reason.

[WinkyDink]

59. "Woman Is Gang-Raped on Order of Village Rapists in India"--FIXED.

[Lunacee_2013]

68. Same shit, different day. Nt.

[Humanist_Activist]

69. I really have no words for how disgusted I am at those village elders and others who perpetuated...

this horror on her. I hope some type of justice can be done.

[Brigid]

70. You couldn't pay me enough to set foot in India.

It has always impressed me as a rather gaudy and chaotic place anyway, and stories like this are hardly going to change my mind.