India police: Village council ordered woman's gang rape

A 20-year-old Indian woman said she was gang-raped on the orders of a village council because she fell in love with a man from a different religion, police said Thursday.

Thirteen men have been arrested in the Monday night attack, police official C. Sudhakar said. The woman told police that she lost count of how many men raped her. She was hospitalized Thursday in serious condition.

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Television footage showed the woman, her face covered by scarves, being led into a hospital with an IV tube in her arm.

According to police, the village council in Subalpur village ordered the woman to pay a fine of 25,000 rupees (nearly $500 Cdn) when her relationship with the man was discovered. But when her family said they were too poor to pay, the council ordered the gang rape.

A rash of high-profile rapes in India over the past year has sparked widespread outrage over chronic sexual violence and government failures to protect women.

The West Bengal case is particularly troubling, because it was allegedly ordered by a council made up of village elders. Such councils are not legally binding in India, but they are seen as the will of the local community. The councils decide on social norms in the village, and in some cases they dictate the way women can dress or who they can marry. Those who flout the councils risk being ostracized.

Subalpur is about 180 kilometres north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.

Four years ago, a village council in Birbhum district ordered a young woman paraded naked through the village. She was accused of falling in love with a man from a different caste.

Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, said that such local councils destroy women's rights.

"They are dead set against giving basic human rights to women," she said. "These are non-constitutional bodies and the West Bengal government should take stringent action against them."

India's Supreme Court has in the past issued opinions condemning the councils as illegal bodies. Several legal organizations are pushing Parliament to pass a comprehensive law that would make edicts by local councils illegal.