Today In Awful: Village Council Votes To Punish Woman With Gang Rape

Thirteen people have been arrested for their involvement in the case of the gang rape of a woman in West Bengal, India. According to police, the participants in the attack did so because they were ordered to… by the village council. Is it too late to formally resign from humanity?

According to the New York Times, the woman ran afoul of the village council when she agreed to marry a man from outside of the village. Officials confronted the couple, eventually tying them both to trees in the village square and announcing that both of them must pay fines totaling about $442 USD. The man paid and was set free; the woman’s family refused.

And that’s when the head of the village council “ordered” villagers to “enjoy her.” She was then gang raped.

The Times is careful to note that while these cases of rape in India get reported in mainstream western news sources an awful lot, there’s no evidence that there’s a higher rate of rape in India than there is in other countries. Still, it’s hard to have a decent afternoon after reading a paragraph like this:

Sunil Soren, a tribal leader from a nearby village, insisted in a telephone interview that people in the area “respect our women a lot.” But he said that Mr. Sheikh and the young woman were “in an objectionable situation,” and that such incidents “pollute the minds of youngsters.”