Mail Online :
Indian police say a 10-year-old girl has been raped on the orders of a village chief ‘as punishment’ after her father beat up a neighbour who broke into his house.
According to reports, the girl’s father attacked his 25-year-old neighbour after the man broke into his house drunk at around midnight and tried to molest his wife.
The next day, the battered and bruised neighbour reported the ‘assault’ to elders in his village in eastern India’s Bokaro district – and they permitted him to rape the girl as revenge.
According to The Times of India, the elders passed the horrifying sentence after deciding the girl’s ‘violent’ father had to be punished.
The newspaper said the 25-year-old dragged the girl into bushes a short distance away and raped her, against the cries of the child’s mother.
Police told the newspaper that an hour later, the mother retrieved her daughter from the bushes, where she was found lying in blood.
Other villagers were reportedly too frightened to intervene in case they became targets themselves.
However, police have released conflicting information on the alleged incident.
According to the Hindustan Times, officers said the girl was 14 years old, not 10, and that she was the sister of the attacker, not his daughter.
The distressing case adds to a list of shocking rape statistics in India, where government data reveals that a sexual attack occurs every 22 minutes.
National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2013 reveal that 24,923 rape cases were reported across the country in 2012.
But women’s groups say the figure is much higher because many women are too ashamed to go to the police.
India’s newly-electred Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month called for action against the country’s rape crisis.
