PAKISTAN - Police in Haripur said they have arrested two men for stripping a woman naked and parading her in a village. One of the offenders had accused the woman's son of having illicit relations with his wife, the police said, reported BBC on Tuesday.
Police said villagers where the incident took place did not try to stop it because the offenders were armed. Haripur district police chief Mohammad Ali Gandapur told the BBC that a resident of Nilor Bala village had complained to village elders that two men had had illicit relations with his wife.
According to the police, a village council advised the complainant to divorce his wife. Instead, he and four armed men stormed the house belonging to the mother of one of the men alleged to have slept with his wife in order to kill her son.
Because the son was not there, the men dragged the mother out, stripped her and made her walk through the village, the police said. They have now registered a case against seven people, but only two have been arrested so far.
They said they were looking for other offenders.
In 2002, Mukhtaran Mai was gang-raped by members of a tribe in the Meerwala village in Muzaffargarh after her brother was accused of developing relations with a local woman.
AFP adds: The incident happened after neighbour Mohammad Salman grew suspicious that the woman's sons slept with his wife in Neelor Bala village, 100 kilometres north of Islamabad, said police official Akhtar Nawaz.
Enraged Salman and his brothers went to confront the suspects, who were identified only as Rashid and Kazim, but they had fled, leaving behind their mother, Nawaz said.
"No one has come to lodge a formal complaint. Police registered a case themselves after receiving reports from local residents," he told AFP.
An investigation is underway and two people have been taken into custody for questioning, he said. Police investigation officer Shabbir Hussain Shah said the statement of the woman, who is aged about 50, had been recorded.
Salman, who works in Lahore, believed that one of the brothers had got his wife pregnant while he was away from home, Shah said.
