INDIA: 1ST SHE IS RAPED, 2ND HER MARRIAGE IS ANNULLED & SHE IS TOLD TO GET OUT, NOW SHE IS TOLD TO MARRY HER RAPIST

Rape victim driven out of village by panchayat

Behrampur, Nov 03: In a virtual repeat of the Imrana case, a mother of four has been driven out of her village in Murshidabad district by a Muslim panchayat after being allegedly raped by a local man over three months ago.

The panchayat ruled her marriage stood annulled in the wake of the incident and neither could she live with her husband nor could she enter the predominantly Muslim village, about 200 km from Kolkata.

The village council ruled the couple should pay Rs 50,000 if they wished to stay together, a pre-condition which the victim's husband, a daily wage labourer, failed to meet.

The victim, who was raped on July 25 in Katabagan village, filed a case at the police station here on Friday following the intervention of Superintendent of Police Rahul Srivasatava.

The local police had earlier refused to register a case. In her complaint, the woman accused Mansoor Ali, a local tough, of raping her in front of her four children.

"I want to keep my wife as it is not her fault, but people are not allowing me to keep her. Who will look after our four children?" her husband told reporters here.

His family was opposing his wife's stay in the house after the incident and the matter was taken up by the panchayat of the village.

She was also not allowed to stay at her father's house by her stepmother, and this left her virtually homeless.

The panchayat also imposed a fine of Rs 18,000 on the rapist which he did not pay.

Imrana, whose father-in-law was recently convicted by a court in Uttar Pradesh for raping her, was also asked by a Muslim panchayat to treat her husband as a son following the crime.

This is just way too insane if you ask me...

Muslim woman told to divorce husband; marry rapist

KOLKOTA: In a trauma similar to that of Imrana Bibi of Uttar Pradesh, a Muslim woman in West Bengal who was raped at knifepoint by a village youth was asked by local clerics to divorce her husband and marry the rapist.

Rehna, 22, of Kantabagan village in Murshidabad district, about 210 km from here, was raped on the night of July 25 by village youth Mansur Mallick while her husband was away in Bangalore on work, local news reports said.

Later, Rehna was asked by the village salishi (kangaroo court) to divorce her husband and marry the rapist.

Rehna was raped at knife-point in front of her four children. She told the villagers about the incident and informed her husband, a mason, over phone. After the husband, Muluk Sheikh, returned, the village court ruled on July 30 that the rapist had to marry the woman.

When the rapist refused to marry her, the salishi ordered him to pay Rehna a fine of Rs 18,000 but only after her divorce was through. Again, the rapist refused, though the kangaroo court ruled that the money would be to meet her divorce cost and for village development.

Strangely, the village elders branded Rehna a woman of loose morals and she was asked to leave Katabagan for her parental home in another village and return only after she got a divorce.

When Rehna and her husband told the salishi that they wanted to stay together, the arbiters asked them to pay Rs 50,000 or leave. The amount was beyond Sheikh’s means.

Rehna went to lodge a complaint with Behrampore police last month but it was not registered. On Thursday, she met Additional Superintendent of Police Shankar Chakraborty and submitted her complaint.

‘‘We will arrest the culprits. Villagers cannot take the law into their own hands,’’ Chakraborty said.

Pertinent Links:

1) Rape victim driven out of village by panchayat

2) Muslim woman told to divorce husband; marry rapist