Another gang rape from the s___holes-of-the-world file

[shira]

This was from January of this year, but it has an interesting twist. It seems that a young woman in a Bengali village fell in love with an outsider and agreed to marry him. That's obviously an unforgivable crime, and worthy of serious punishment. The village chief, the old softy, was willing to let the woman and her family off with a $221 fine. But when the woman's family refused, what choice did the chief have but to order the villagers to gang rape her?

(You know, just like we now have an (unofficial) thread for police misconduct, maybe we need another thread for "abuse of women in third-world shit-holes.")

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

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 the Indian police.

Thirteen people have been arrested in the case, including the village chief, who both ordered and participated in the rape, said 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 outside the 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 community rules.

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 news reports.

Mr. Mardi told the young woman and her family that if they reported the rape to the police, the village elders would burn their house down, Mr. Yadav said. They went to the police anyway on Wednesday, and within hours Mr. Mardi and 12 other suspects were arrested, he said.

The chief of police in the area, Sidh Nath Gupta, said that the 13 suspects were charged with rape, wrongful confinement, verbal threats and assault. The victim has been admitted to a local hospital, where she is in stable condition, Mr. Gupta said.

Sunil Soren, a 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.”

I want to interrupt the reporting at this point to make an editorial point. Maybe it's pretty obvious, but do you see Sunil Soren's point? The very idea of this woman agreeing to marry an outsider was so disgusting that it "polluted" the minds of the young people of the village. But a gang rape was obviously the remedy to clean up those "polluted" young minds.

“In the excitement, some wrong things happened,” Mr. Soren said.

Village councils are common in rural India. They 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 marital codes are sometimes murdered. Genetic researchers have found that India’s population has hundreds of distinct subgroups, in part because village councils have been enforcing marital codes and limiting intermarriage for centuries.

Several widely publicized rape cases over the past year have provoked outrage over sexual violence and violence against women in India, and prompted changes in laws and greater awareness of the problem, although there is little evidence that rape or gang rape occurs more frequently in India than in other countries.

With just 7.5 percent of India’s population, West Bengal in 2012 accounted for nearly 13 percent of reported crimes against women. Whether that demonstrates a higher incidence of such crimes or a greater willingness by the local police to take such reports seriously is unknown.

Local politicians sometimes react angrily to the publicity given to rape cases, which they believe reflect badly on their administration. 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 the police found evidence supporting the victim’s account.

The gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus in December 2012 prompted protests across the country. In response, the government doubled the maximum prison term for rape to 20 years, created special courts to prosecute cases more quickly, and made voyeurism and acid attacks specific crimes under the law. Whether those changes have improved women’s safety in the country is unclear.

 

[alzan]

I'm not an adherent of the "eye for an eye" dictum, but people like the village chief (and the villagers who followed his edict should receive the same treatment as the girl; preferably by a rhinoceros who's received a size-appropriate dose of Viagra.

It's pretty sick and lame to control a person or village via the atrocity of rape.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

This isn't even the worst recent case, as a couple of cousins aged 14 & 16 were gang raped and hanged from a tree in India in recent days.

Oh, here is the thread about it just below yours in this forum:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2385200

 

[nehalem256]

It's having a heart and a mind that acknowledges, accepts, values, and even celebrates the various ways that people live and interact in the world. It's answering the question, "What is cultural diversity?" with a warm and caring heart that realizes that - even with our various cultural differences - we all aspire to many of the same things: security, well-being, acceptance, individualism, esteem, and some form of equity, whether it's physical, spiritual or emotional.

Characteristics of diversity are (but not limited to): age; cognitive style; culture; disability (mental, learning, physical); economic background; education; ethnicity; gender identity; geographic background; language(s) spoken; marital/partnered status; physical appearance; political affiliation; race; religious beliefs; sexual orientation or veteran's status.

Cultural diversity, or multiculturalism, is based on the idea that cultural identities should not be discarded or ignored, but rather maintained and valued

http://www.fhsu.edu/diversity-affairs/what-is-diversity/

Yeah diversity!

Perhaps the rapists should be given preferential college admissions so we can have sufficient diversity on college campuses?

 

[brycejones]

Nehlam whining about his toaster again?

As for the op throw these bastards in a deep dark hole or give them death by bobo.

 

[JTsyo]

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

At least it is not being overlooked or excused.

 

[inf1nity]

Another gang rape from the s___holes-of-the-world file

You mean like this?

 

[Victorian Gray]

You mean like this?

Not comparable (and you already know that) but this might be

"In the incident in Etawah, five men — including the father, a brother and a cousin of the man accused in the rape — followed the victim's mother away from her house and beat her relentlessly on Monday, demanding she drop the accusation, said Dinesh Kumar, the town's police superintendent. The mother was in critical condition in a local hospital, with numerous broken bones and internal injuries."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mother...-for-refusing-to-withdraw-complaint-1.2659188

tit-for-tat isn't going to get you anywhere is this discussion.

 

[inf1nity]

No tit-for-tat. Just pointing out that you people have too many rapes happening in your own country to be pointing fingers.

 

[Victorian Gray]

No tit-for-tat. Just pointing out that you people have too many rapes happening in your own country to be pointing fingers.

And, as I pointed out, not comparable situations. False equivalency at it's best.

 

[Pulsar]

No tit-for-tat. Just pointing out that you people have too many rapes happening in your own country to be pointing fingers.

You seem like a fairly smart individual. Or at least, you aren't as predisposed to hatred as some of the other Indians we have here.

I said this in the last thread and I'll say it again here.

Your suggestion that we can't talk about the problems in India because we have problems of our own is silly. You need to get rid of your nationalism: the tendencies to try to ignore the bad parts of your country and culture. Attempting to stop people from talking about them is going to get you mocked.

 

[Sulaco]

No tit-for-tat. Just pointing out that you people have too many rapes happening in your own country to be pointing fingers.

The problem is not so much that rapes are happening; that's a sad fact throughout the world unfortunately, it's the culture surrounding the rapes that must be considered and confronted.

 

[cyclohexane]

No tit-for-tat. Just pointing out that you people have too many rapes happening in your own country to be pointing fingers.

I was not aware that we have gang rapes weekly here in the US, where the police refuse to investigate, and the rapists go free.

Sure, rapes happen in every country, but crazy batshit gang rapes only happen in countries where women have no rights like India.

 

[Darwin333]

No tit-for-tat. Just pointing out that you people have too many rapes happening in your own country to be pointing fingers.

I would say that a village chief would be equivalent to one of our small towns mayors, can you find a story of a mayor ordering and participating in the gang rape of a woman because she decided to marry someone from a different town (or any reason)?