An unelected all male village council in an Indian village, has ordered that two ladies, 23-year-old Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister, be raped by several men each as punishment their brother ran off with a married woman.
In addition to their sentence, the two sisters would also be paraded naked round the community with blackened faces, an act of extreme humiliation in that country.
The strange punishment was by Amnesty International which has launched a petition calling on India's authorities to intervene immediately and protect the two sisters, while urging concerned members of the public all over the world to sign up a petition to save the girls and their family who have fled their village in the Baghpat district, just outside of Delhi.
According to reports in Indian media, the sisters' brother, Ravi, fell in love with a girl from the Jat caste, a higher social caste than Ravi and his family, who are Dalit, once known as the 'untouchables', who are at the bottom of India's caste system.
The Jat woman's family married her off to someone else in February but she later escaped and eloped with Ravi in March.
As punishment, on July 31, a village council decided Ravi's sisters should be raped to avenge his actions. Since the family fled their village their home has been ransacked.
Sumit Kumar, another brother of Meenakshi, told Amnesty that members of the Jat caste were powerful members of the village council, saying:
'The Jat decision is final.'
