A woman in India was allegedly gang raped by a group of men who brutally beat her then left her for dead hanging naked from an electrical pole.
The woman, thought to be a mother aged around 30, is believed to have been targeted as she ventured out to use a public toilet before being taken to a secluded part of her village in Bihar.
Her attackers were said by locals to be a group of labourers who had been working to set up tents for a wedding which was due to be held at the woman’s home, according to local reports.
The woman was found tied to an electrical pole with no clothes on by a villager who raised the alarm. She was rushed to hospital where she remains in a critical condition and unable to speak.
She had also been stripped of her jewellery by the attackers, who were said to have battered and threatened to kill her as she tried to fight them off.
Seven suspects have since been arrested in connection with the alleged attack which took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to the Times of India.
Samastipur SP Manavjit Singh Dhillon said that ‘on several occasions, victims in villages don’t tell us about being raped’ because of the ‘social stigma’ in the country, the newspaper reports.
There were 32,033 rape cases recorded in India in 2019, or 88 per day on average.
It is widely acknowledged that the vast majority of rapes in the country are never reported, and this is thought to be a factor behind the significantly lower per-capita rate compared to other nations