Indian Teen Raped as Penalty for Brother's Actions

A girl has been raped in northern India after a village council ordered the crime as payback for her brother's actions, according to police and her family. The Wall Street Journal reports the teen's brother stands accused of trying to sexually assault the wife of Birju Pasi, with the Jharkhand police chief telling the BBC the wife was "the victim of misbehavior on the part of the girl's brother." He says the girl, 14, was raped Monday by Pasi "out of retaliation" and that "the head of the village was instrumental in provoking this rape on the victim." Both men have been arrested, as has the girl's brother.

The girl's mother tells the AP, "We begged with folded hands but [the village council] would not listen. They dragged her away to the forest." A police rep says that her father later took her to a police station, her clothes "smeared with blood." The Journal notes that unelected village councils, like the one in question, are common in India, though they are illegal. The case is just the latest in a string of disturbing rapes in India. Police announced this week they will exhume the bodies of two teenage girls who were gang-raped and hanged in May in order to perform autopsies. (More rape stories.)