A ten-year-old girl has been raped at the orders of a village chief in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, after her husband beat up a man who tried to molest the child’s mother, it has been reported.

It is the latest shocking sex crime to hit India and further highlights the country’s severe problem of violence against women, says The Times of India.

Police have said that the rape followed a confrontation where an intoxicated 25-year-old man entered the victim’s house and tried to molest the child’s mother before her husband apprehended the attacker and threw him out of the house.

The following morning, the attacker complained of being assaulted to the chief of the Bokaro district village, police say. An assembly of elders was then convene to determine the husband’s punishment for his violence.

A tree where two teenage girls were found hanging after they were gang raped in Katra village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh state in May. Source: AP Images More



The families of the victims and attackers alike were then summoned to a meeting where the village chief allegedly ruled that the attacker rape the ten-year-old girl to avenge his beating.

The man is then alleged to have dragged the girl into bushes and raped the girl to the chorus of her mother’s cries. An hour later the mother retrieved her daughter from the bushes where she lay blood-soaked.

Despite the horrific nature of this incident it is merely one in an estimated 25,000 yearly rape cases which are reported in India.