Pakistan village council 'ordered revenge rape' of teenage girl as punishment for her brother's crime

Fourteen members of a Pakistani village council have been arrested for ordering the rape of a teenage girl as punishment for a rape committed by her brother, police said on Wednesday.

The incident occurred earlier this month in the neighbourhood of Raja Ram in Muzaffarabad, a suburb of the central city of Multan.

"A village council had ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl as punishment, as her brother had raped a 12-year-old," said Allah Baksh, a local police official. 

A police official told the Telegraph that the man allegedly raped the young girl, after which her family turned to the local village council to resolve the matter. 

The council then ordered that the attacker's 16-year-old sister should be raped by the original victim's brother.

According to reports, the teenage girl was raped by the victim's brother in front of her parents and council members.

Village councils, formed of local elders, are a traditional means of settling disputes in Pakistan's rural areas, where courts and lawyers are not always accessible or trusted.

But such councils are illegal and have been under fire for their controversial decisions, especially regarding women.

A village council was involved in one of South Asia's most infamous cases of sexual violence against women when, in 2002, it ordered the gang rape of a woman called Mukhtar Mai after her brother was falsely accused of rape.

Ms Mai made the unusual decision to defy her rapists and take them to court. Her attackers walked free but she went on to become a high-profile women's rights activist.