After Gang Rape of Girl, 16, First a Fine, and Then a Murder
The authorities said at least two of the 15 in custody were village leaders accused of tampering with evidence and meting out their own fines and punishments instead of reporting the crime to the police.
“I think it is a degradation in society as a whole for people to take the law into their own hands,” said Jitendra Kumar Singh, the deputy commissioner of police in Chatra.
Mr. Bhuiyan, who initially escaped through a window after he killed the girl, was captured on Saturday, Mr. Singh said.
Last month, the killing of an 8-year-old girl from a nomadic community in northern India ignited protests across the country and provoked political fallout for the government, including the resignation of two high-level officials from the governing party.
Critics said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and members of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party failed to speak out forcefully against the crime. The girl, who was Muslim, was gang raped and murdered by a group of Hindu men in January, and Hindu nationalists in the area rallied around the accused to protect them from prosecution.
In the wake of that attack, headlines in the Indian news media have been dominated by other horrific crimes against women, including the molestation last week of a teenage girl by a group of men who recorded it on video.
Public debates have focused on how courts should punish crimes of this nature, with the Indian government pushing for applying the death penalty to rapists of young children. The rape conviction rate has remained persistently low in India, and millions of cases are stuck in an overburdened court system.
The post After Gang Rape of Girl, 16, First a Fine, and Then a Murder appeared first on World The News.
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