Mother-Daughter Beaten And Their Heads Shaved For Resisting Rape

Two women in Bihar were beaten up and their heads were shaven off for resisting rape by a group of men. In this shockingly incident, the group of men also included a local government official, they had barged into the house of the woman and were violent towards the two women. They had entered the home with the intent of raping the daughter. The incident took place in north-eastern Bihar. The same group of men had shaved their heads as a punishment, the police said.

This is not the first time that such a heinous incident has taken place in Bihar. In 2014, the head of an orphan girl was shaved off. Her face was blackened with ash and then paraded through her neighbourhood. All this took place only because she was talking to her boyfriend in public.

“When the mother and daughter protested, the men got angry and called a local barber, who shaved their heads,” senior officer Sanjay Kumar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. When the mother resisted rape, the men started beating both the mother and daughter before taking them outside. The neighbours however, protested against their treatment. “We have arrested two men and are searching for the other five,” Kumar said, adding that the criminal investigation was on-going.

The mother told ANI, “We have been beaten very badly. I have injuries all over my body and my daughter too has some injuries.” The daughter said, “I was alone with my mother around 6.30 pm in the evening when five men from the neighbourhood forcefully entered the house and tried to molest me. When my mother and I protested, they started beating us with a stick and took us outside of the house.”

The same group of men had shaved their heads as a punishment, the police said. In this shockingly incident, the group of men also included a local government official, they had barged into the house of the woman and were violent towards the two women.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News Delhi, says, “The attempted rape is a sexual crime, but the subsequent assault, tonsuring the women's heads and parading them through the village is an assertion of male power in a community, deeply entrenched in patriarchy. What is most worrisome is that the assaulting mob was led by a government official - an elected representative whose job is to look after the welfare of his people, not attack them.”

This is not the first time that such a heinous incident has taken place in Bihar. In 2014, the head of an orphan girl was shaved off. Her face was blackened with ash and then paraded through her neighbourhood. All this took place only because she was talking to her boyfriend in public.

No Visible Improvement In Sexual Violence Against Women

Though we have been trying to end sexual violence against women, especially after a student was raped in a moving bus in 2012, the statistics do not really show any improvement. According to the latest data available with the government, rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India. As of 2018, there was 3.03% increase in rapes over 2017 in the country's capital.

Image credit: BBC

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