INDIA: RAPE VICTIM SET ON FIRE BY HER RAPIST

Indian rape victim burned alive for testifyingBruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent
November 27, 2006

THE plight of India's untouchables was highlighted again yesterday after a 15-year-old Dalit rape victim was burned alive for refusing to drop charges against her alleged upper-caste attacker.

Asha Katiya reportedly told police before she died of her burns at a hospital in Pipariya, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, that the man had threatened to kill her if she did not change her statement in court.

"I will burn you, set your house afire and cut your father into pieces," Asha's mother, Shashibai, quoted the 22-year-old man as warning them when she and her daughter were working in the fields near their home the day before the blaze.

Newspapers reported that late on the day of the blaze, the man rode past Asha's home on a horse and that night "doused the victim with kerosene from an opening in the roof of a room where she was sleeping and threw a burning matchstick".

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