A teenage girl was humiliated, raped and then murdered before being dumped on a railway track after she stood up for her father in a dispute with village elders, police in India believe.
The semi-naked body of the 16-year-old girl from Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, was found near her home, 420 miles (680km) north of Calcutta on Tuesday, a day after she had appeared at a village court.
As part of the court’s punishment, she was ordered to spit on the ground and lick it up — a profoundly humiliating act in India, according to her family. She apparently refused to do so.
The girl’s body was discovered the next morning. Court elders have denied being involved in her rape and murder after handing down her punishment.
“Police arrested three people after the girl’s father lodged a complaint that she was raped and murdered,” James Kujur, a police officer, said.
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It is thought that the girl had been trying to protect her father from being beaten up after his failure to repay a loan for a tractor.
Informal village councils, or panchayats, hold enormous influence in many Indian villages, handing down judgments, settling local disputes, issuing edicts and punishments. However, their legal status and right to impose punishments is unclear.
The latest attack has prompted fresh outrage in India, after a spate of similar crimes that has thrown a spotlight on the treatment of women in the world’s second-most populous country. In a notorious case in 2012 a 23-year-old woman was gang-raped and killed on a Delhi bus.
Although India has imposed stricter anti-rape laws, there has been little sign of a slowdown. Many of the most serious recent attacks have taken place in West Bengal, an impoverished state in the country’s east.
In another incident this year, a woman was gang-raped by up to 13 men as a punishment for having had an unauthorised relationship with a man from a different community.
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The attack in Jalpaiguri may have had political undertones, with some local media sources saying that the girl’s family was affiliated with the Communist Party of India, while the council was dominated by members of the ruling Trinamool Congress Party. The two parties have a long history of violence and murder.