Stand by Your Woman

Here is small item from The Times of India dated September 23, 2005. We are still very new to Indian culture. We read the paper each day absorbing the many things we still need to understand.

Rapist Refuses to Marry Victim
Banka: A rape victim was divorced by her husband in Bihar's Banka district with the approval of a panchayat, which ordered the rapist to marry her but failed to ensure com­pliance.

The young woman was raped allegedly by Sheikh Ejaz at Rehmandih village in the dis­trict on August 24. Her married life lay in tat­ters the moment she revealed this to her husband of five years M D Farooq.

Farooq refused to accept her as wife thereafter and took the matter to the local panchayat, seeking divorce. The panchayat asked him to divorce his wife after paying alimony and ordered Ejaz to marry her.

When the victim's father Sheikh Iqbal went to Ejaz's father Sheikh Sherawat on September 15 to fix the marriage date, the father-son duo refused to abide by the panchayat's verdict and assaulted Iqbal. Sherawat offered to give monetary compen­sation to the victim, but she refused and moved the court of the chief judicial magistrate of Banka on September 16.