Cops: Pakistani Woman Gang-Raped, Hanged

Police are investigating yet another gang rape and hanging of a young woman, this time in Pakistan instead of India. Authorities in the Punjab province area of Layyah say 20-year-old Muzammil Bibi was assaulted by three men in a field, reports Reuters. Her parents found her body hanging from a tree the next morning, and, based on her injuries, police think she fought back against her rapists. Three men have confessed, say police. "This is the first time in my 22 years of service in the police that I have seen such a case, where a girl was raped in this way and found hanging from a tree," says a senior officer.

The case bears a resemblance to the gang rape and hanging of two teen cousins in India in May, which was followed by two similar attacks in that country. It also follows attacks in Pakistan in which a pregnant woman was stoned to death and another woman was shot and thrown in a canal. Family members are blamed in the latter two. Violence against women in the region is so prevalent that it barely registers as a crime, one rights activist tells India's Zee News. "It is a mindset that has to change." (More Pakistan stories.)