A Violation of Justice

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Shaking behind her black chador, or veil, 18-year-old Makhutar Mai stood before a jury made up of men who hated her. Mai is a dairy farmer's daughter, a Tatla Gujjar, and the council members before her were all from a higher, landed caste group, the Mastoi Baloch. Mai's brother had dared to romance a girl from the higher caste, and in the dusty mid-day sun of rural Pakistani Punjab, a rowdy crowd gathered to demand eye-for-an-eye-style justice. The six seated elders finally delivered their judgment. To restore the caste's honor, they announced, Mai should be repeatedly raped. For the next hour, in a small barn nearby, three men penetrated Mai while a fourth stood watching.

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It's common in rural Pakistan for local councils, called panchayats, to adjudicate minor disputes over land, water or honor; the system is supposed to work in tandem with local police. But these days the councils are veering out of control. Last week, a man acquitted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court was retried by a village committee in Punjab. A day later he was stoned to death by a crowd of 250 to 300.

Mai's life began to unravel in late June, when her 14-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor was seen walking with his lover, an older girl from the more powerful caste. According to police, the girl's uncles kidnapped Shakoor, beat him up, sodomized him and held him captive in a family compound. The next day, Shakoor's uncle tried to get him released by proposing a formal panchayat. A council was formed by three members of each clan group. After hearing testimony it came to a decision: that Shakoor should marry his girlfriend, and one Tatla girl should be given to a Mastoi son for marriage, along with a parcel of land. The Mastois didn't feel that was enough, so they convened their own council made up of Mastoi men, many of them armed with Kalashnikovs, and demanded that Mai be raped. After her ordeal, she was forced to walk home through the town almost naked.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf condemned the incident and ordered $8,200 to be given to the family for immediate relief. On receiving the money, Mai said she wanted it to be used to build a school in the village. "For the girls," she told a government minister, "because they must no longer remain enclosed in darkness."