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20-year-old woman gang-raped, killed and hanged from a tree in Pakistan: Three arrested

Muzammil Bibi, was attacked in a field in an impoverished area of Punjab, in a case which echoes that of a double rape and murder in India last month

Tomas Jivanda
Sunday 22 June 2014 12:12 BST
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Women in India protest against rape and other attacks on women and girls in the country. The case in Pakistan echoes a similar murder in India last month, where violence against women has been much more widely debated over the last year
Women in India protest against rape and other attacks on women and girls in the country. The case in Pakistan echoes a similar murder in India last month, where violence against women has been much more widely debated over the last year (AP)

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Three men have been arrested after a 20-year-old woman was gang-raped, killed and hanged from a tree in Pakistan.

In a case which bares a chilling resemblance to the double rape and murder of two low caste girls in neighbouring India, Muzammil Bibi, was attacked in a field in the impoverished Layyah area of Punjab province.

According to police, she resisted the rape and the attackers strangled her. Her parents spent the night looking for her before finding her body hanging the next morning.

"The girl's clothes were torn. We took her down and moved her to hospital. Her body had signs of resistance.

"We have arrested three individuals who have confessed to the crime," Senior officer Sadaqat Ali Chohan said.

"This is the first time in my 22 years of service in the police that I have seen such a case, where a girl was raped in this way and found hanging from a tree.

"We have heard of such cases in India but never in Pakistan."

Pakistan is however no stranger to brutal rapes. Earlier this year 18-year-old student Amina Bibi was raped by five men as she walked home from college. She died after setting herself on fire when one of the suspects accused of attacking her was released by police.

In 2002, Mukhtaran Bibi became an international advocate of human rights after she was gang raped by order of a Pakistani tribal council.

In the north of India, two teenage cousins were found hanging from a tree after being raped in May, the latest of a series of murderous attacks which have triggered debate on violence against women across the country.

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