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On Sunday (May 6), Indian police arrested the primary suspect in the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl who was set on fire and burned to death. The arrest comes amid a spate of sexual crimes and attacks on women currently afflicting India.
According to CNN, Dhanu Bhuiyan is just one of 20 men accused in the incident, which took place in the northeastern state of Jharkhand. The attack comes not long after two other incidents which are reportedly unrelated, including the case of an 11-year-old girl found in Surat, Gujarat who appeared to have been raped, tortured and strangled.
Here’s what else you need to know:
1 According to investigators, Bhuiyan allegedly kidnapped the 16-year-old girl—whose identity is protected by Indian law—from her home on Thursday night while her family was attending a wedding. She was then taken to a forest, where she was gang-raped by Bhuiyan and multiple others.
2 Seeking justice, the girl’s family reached out to the village council the following day. The accused men were reportedly ordered do 100 situps and pay a fine of 50,000 rupees ($750). They retaliated by assaulting the girl’s parents and setting their home on fire, killing the girl.
3 Local police detained 15 people in connection with the case. The local village chief was among those detained.
4 Last month, thousands in India protested in what CNN called “one of the largest mass demonstrations held in the country since the rape and murder of a female college student in Delhi in 2012.”
5 According to the National Crime Records Bureau, close to 100 sexual assaults are reported to police in India every day. In 2016, there were 39,000 alleged attacks, reflecting a 12% increase from 2015.
Read more about this and other recent cases at CNN.
