A 35-year-old woman was allegedly stripped and whipped after she defied the diktats of a kangaroo court in Bihar’s Katihar district to remarry her second husband. The illegal court at the Gwaltoli-Kalyannagar village summoned the woman on July 8 and directed her to to remarry her second husband from whom she had divorced earlier, the superintendent of police, Mr P. Kanan said on Tuesday, quoting the FIR lodged by her. Mr Kanan said the woman’s first husband died four years after the marriage and after some time she married a man named Mohammad Islam of the same village and the couple had a son. But, the marriage did not work and the couple divorced. Subsequently, when her five year-old son was down with fever, she had to call her divorced husband as she was living in penury, the SP said. After the son recovered Islam left.
He said that Islam and his brother Samsuddin later connived in summoning the kangaroo court which was headed by a former mukhiya, Akalu.
The kangaroo court first asked her to pay money equivalent to that required for construction of a house, besides wheat and rice to the former mukhiya. As she refused she was dragged to a mango grove on the outskirts of the village stripped and whipped. The SP said the woman lodged an FIR on July 11 after which Akalu and Samsuddin were arrested. She alleged that a former mukhiya of the panchayat, Akalu, ordered the woman to be stripped and beaten up, he said.
