[The 20-year-old woman told police on Wednesday that she was raped
by a dozen men in her Labhpur village in the eastern state of West Bengal after
the village chieftain conducted an informal tribal court and ordered men to
punish her with rape.]
By Rama Lakshmi
NEW DELHI —India’s Supreme Court ordered a probe Friday into the horrifying
case of a young tribal woman who was gang-raped by village elders and other men
as a punishment for falling in love with a Muslim.
The incident once again shone the spotlight on widespread sexual assaults on women in
India. But it is also focusing attention on the powerful role of village clan
councils, who often hand out crude punishments — outside of any official
judicial system — for those who defy traditional social norms.
The 20-year-old woman told police on Wednesday that she was raped
by a dozen men in her Labhpur village in the eastern state of West Bengal after
the village chieftain conducted an informal tribal court and ordered men to
punish her with rape.
She was assaulted for hours in the chieftain's hut, authorities
said, and 13 men have now been charged in the assault.
Sexual assault cases are being reported more often in India since
the fatal gang-rape of a young woman in New
Delhi in a moving bus 13 months ago. The attack sparked a national outcry and an unprecedented
public conversation about the safety of women.
The Labhpur incident highlights the challenge faced by India in
trying to enhance women’s freedom to reflect modern norms within tightly-knit
village communities that are still largely governed by ethnicity, casteand
deeply patriarchal practices.
In spite of the rapid economic and social changes sweeping India,
informal village elders’ groups and clan councils routinely resolve local
disputes and react to behavior they deem socially inappropriate by ordering
their own punishments.
In recent years, these informal clan councils, which work
separately from elected village councils, have forbidden women in northern
India from going to the bazaar in the evenings, wearing jeans, or speaking on
cell phones.
In the northern state of Haryana, village elders have also ordered
the killing of young couples who fall in love
and elope in defiance of caste and clan restrictions. Such killings, they have
said, are necessary to preserve honor of the community and deter others.
Families have also been ostracized from the village for not obeying village
verdicts.
Monday’s rape was by far one of the most violent assaults in
recent times, analysts said.
According to local officials in West Bengal, the village council
first tied the woman and her lover, a Muslim construction worker from a
neighboring village, to a tree. The woman belongs to an indigenous tribe that
has its own religious traditions; marriage or romantic relationships outside
that group is frowned upon by tribal elders.
Elders demanded a penalty equivalent to 800 U.S. dollars from the
woman and her lover, officials said. When the woman's relatives said they did
not have the money, the council held a meeting and ordered the gang-rape.
Analysts say that village council punishments often occur in
socially and economically backward areas, where official administration is weak
and people are ignorant about issues like gender equality and human rights.
Elected village councils, or "gram panchayat," are often
powerless to stop such incidents, said Ramesh Nayak, a sociologist who
hasinvestigated such cases.
“The village community gets together and hands out punishment,
like stripping a person naked, forcing them to wear garland of shoes, tied to
ropes, made to ride on donkeys. But this kind of gang rape is unusual,” Nayak
said. “A woman is punished and humiliated to teach her a lesson, so that she
never raises her head again or defies the traditional social customs.”
On Friday, India’s Supreme Court called the West Bengal case “disturbing” and
ordered the district judge in Birbhum to visit the village and file a report in
a week. The court also asked the state government there for an explanation.
The woman is still in the hospital but her life is not in danger,
local officials said.
Many of the men in Labhpur have fled, according to local reports.
Those who remain have become hostile to the reporters and social activists who
have descended on the small village, about six hours from the state's capital
of Kolkata.
“There is a lot of anger in the village now, they are saying,
‘this is our internal matter, why are outsiders interfering?’,” said Shashi
Panja, the minister for women and child welfare in the West Bengal government.
“These are village courts that we do not recognize, they are illegal. My
question is, what did the elected village council members do when this was
going on? Did they just accept this verdict silently?”
Ajoy Mondal, an elected member of a council from the neighboring
village of Ramjibanpu, said he suspected that, out of respect for tradition,
nobody in the village resisted or did anything to stop the rape.
“Nobody defies such orders because it is seen as preserving tribal
traditions,” Mondal said.
Incidents of rape have increased in West Bengal in recent weeks, a
fact that officials attribute to more women being willing to report such
violence.
Just Tuesday, nearly 3,000 marchers protested in a suburb of Kolkata to
demand police action in the gang-rape of a woman who worked in a fitness center
in a city mall.
“Every other day we are reading about a new case of rape in West
Bengal,” said Sibaji Pratim Basu, an associate professor of political science
at West Bengal State University who took part in the protest. “Whether in
villages or our cities, it is the same psychological mind-set, which says
women’s bodies are objects through which you exercise social power and
domination.”
