Global Outrage Follows Sentencing of Two Indian Women to Punishment by Gang Rape
India’s treatment of women is again eliciting shock as reports circulate about an unofficial council of village elders who ordered two Indian women to be gang-raped after their brother eloped with a married woman of a higher caste.
Meenakshi Kumari, 23, and her 15-year-old sister were told that their faces would be blackened and they would be raped and paraded naked in front of their neighbors by a council based in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. Kumari then petitioned the Indian Supreme Court to protect her and her family, which is of the Dalit caste — the lowest in India’s hierarchy. Members of the caste were previously referred to as “untouchables.” The word Dalit means “oppressed.”
The woman their brother eloped with is of the higher Jat caste.
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