More members of a village council in Pakistan have been arrested for ordering the revenge rape of a teenager because her brother had sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in a field.

The latest arrests, which include the man who allegedly committed the 'revenge rape', brings the total number detained to 18, a police source confirmed.

A jirga - or village council - in a suburb of the central city of Multan had ordered the rape of the 16-year-old girl as a punishment, after her brother sexually assaulted a 12-year-old.

She was dragged to the meeting in Rajpur and the horrific retaliation was carried out in front of her parents and the 40 men on the council.

A Pakistani villager poses as he points to a house where a teenage girl was raped in the neighbourhood of Raja Ram in Muzaffarabad, a suburb of the central city of Multan on July 26, 2017

Family member Muhammad Bilal, 25, said after they learned of the first rape - which was committed last week - they went to the 12-year-old's family to seek forgiveness.

'Their women started shouting and their men asked us to first bring Umar's sister (the 16-year-old) then they will talk about it,' he said.

'But when we came back with the girl, the men and the council decided that the same act would be done to the girl. What could we do, in our village disputes are settled like this.'

Both the girls are now staying in a women's shelter and were due to meet the provincial chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, brother of the prime minister, later today.

This photograph taken on July 26, 2017, shows a view of a room where a Pakistani teenage girl was raped in the neighbourhood of Raja Ram in Muzaffarabad

Pakistan's Supreme Court has also ordered an investigation into the incident.

Jirgas, or 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.

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

'What we did was wrong, but this is the way things are done here. We seek pardon and we promise not to do it again,' said Mohammad Amin, 45, a member of the jirga who is now in police custody.

An aerial shot of a festival in Multan, where the council convened to dish out the sickening punishment to an innocent girl

A jirga 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.

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.

Her story inspired an opera, 'Thumbprint', which opened in New York in 2014 and premiered in Los Angeles last month.