Two sisters to be raped as punishment – demand justice

Khap Panchayat: Jat decision is final

The couple surrendered after the alleged torture of family members, it is claimed. The young man has been arrested under a drug charge and he remains in jail.

Unelected village councils such as this are widespread in parts of India. More often than not they are made up of older men from dominant castes, who prescribe rules for social behaviour and interaction in villages.

The supreme court of India has described them as ‘kangaroo courts’ and branded their decrees illegal, yet in some states they continue to operate – and their punishments are carried out.  On 18 August, the Supreme Court ordered Uttar Pradesh authorities to reply to the petition by 15 September.

Act now to demand that this disgusting ruling is not allowed to happen. 

"All-male village council in Bagpat dstrict UP (India) has ordered that 23-year-old Meenakshi Kumari and her 15-year-old sister are raped. The ‘sentence’ was handed down as punishment after their brother eloped with a married woman. They also ordered for the sisters to be paraded naked with blackened faces. Nothing could justify this abhorrent punishment. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And it’s against the law. Demand that the local authorities intervene immediately."

Sumit Kumar, another brother of Meenakshi says that members of the Jat caste are powerful members of the village council, ‘the Jat decision is final’.

His family fears for their lives if they return.The story took more aggression when an upper caste woman eloped from  matrimonial home with a lower caste young man of her paternal village.

Meenakshi has filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking for protection, and her father has lodged a complaint with two national bodies saying that both his family has been harassed not just by the family of the eloped woman (who are of the dominant caste and therefore influential), but also by the police.

They are also worried about the safety of the Jat woman, who is now thought to be pregnant with Meenakshi’s brother’s child.

The sisters are from a village in Baghpat district in India. There, on 30 July, an unelected all-male village council (khap panchayat) ordered that they be raped and paraded naked, their faces blackened, as punishment for the actions of their brother's misconduct. 

The sisters and their family had already fled the village in May for fear of reprisals for their brother’s actions – he eloped with a married woman from a dominant caste (Jat). Shortly after they left their house was ransacked.