Patna: A man was beaten up and paraded through the streets after he was accused of raping a woman at a village in Bhagalpur district, 250km east of Patna, on Wednesday.
Reports said the accused, identified as Sunil Shah, entered the house of a woman on Tuesday night and raped her at knifepoint in the presence of family members. He fled the scene after committing the crime.
The matter was reported to the local “sarpanch”, elected head of a village-level statutory institution of local self-government with limited judicial powers. Acting on the complaint, the sarpanch Ramchandra Mandal wasted no time and the accused was brought to his residence. The accused had his head tonsured and subsequently a garland made of worn out footwear was put around his neck before parading through the streets.
Witnesses said the accused and his family pleaded for mercy but the village council official refused to listen to their request and ordered the villagers to “execute the punishment then and there”. The accused was let off only after he had made rounds of the entire village.
“We are gathering details in this regard. Appropriate action will be initiated against the villagers who took law in their hands. They must have informed the police instead,” a local police official Santosh Kumar told the Gulf News over phone.
Incidents of rape remain a matter of serious concern in Bihar despite claims by the state government that the criminal incidents have come down after the implementation of total ban on alcohol in Bihar in April last year.
As per an official report, a total of 922 incidents of rape have been reported until September this year, which means on an average three incidents of rapes are taking place every day in the state. Last year, a total of 945 incidents of rape had been reported while in 2015 the number stood at 1,041.
