A Panchayat Court reportedly ordered a 50-year-old Rajasthani woman to parade naked on a donkey after it ruled that she was guilty of killing her husband's cousin.
The alleged incident took place on Saturday evening in Rajsamand, a small village in southern Rajasthan. According to NDTV reports, the police stated that village residents chopped off the woman's hair, blackened her face and stripped her naked even though she pleaded that she was innocent of the crime in question.
Rajsamand, like many small villages in Rajasthan, defers its legal conflicts to community councils or Panchayats that are tagged as "kangaroo courts" as they have no actual legal status. Even though Rajasthan's High Court has claimed that these courts are illegal and is issuing criminal proceedings against them, their rulings are still considered to be the law in many rural areas of the state.
The group present at the time also beat the woman with sticks. NDTV states that 39 people, including 9 from the woman's family, have been arrested after her husband and son reported the incident to the police.
NDTV added that the woman's sister-in-law had confirmed to the Panchayat that her husband – who died on November 2 – was indeed murdered by the woman in question.
The woman has been shifted to "a nearby shelter where she is undergoing counseling as she is in a state of shock," Sudhir Joshi, a senior police officer, reportedly told Indo-Asian News Service.
