Women are not safe in India – can be stripped and paraded naked in villages

This bit of news from a village in Jaipur is enough to shock us beyond belief because we pride ourselves of being in a country where women are held in high esteem and respected as mother or sister. How then can local panchayat leaders take the law into their own hands and take such inhuman decisions? The woman was suspected to have committed murder – why not refer the matter to the police?
The shameful incident happened in Thurval village which is located some seven km from Charbhuja town in Rajsamand district when members of a community panchayat in a tribal area of the district accused a 45-year-old woman of killing her nephew.
The decision of the panchayat was to blacken her face, strip and parade her on a donkey's back.
The decision was taken in a meeting and the punishment was meted out instantly.
When her husband came to know of this, he lodged an FIR and the police have arrested 30 persons in this connection - nine of them are believed to be from the victim's family.
The traumatized woman has been shifted to a shelter home for the time being and she was being counseled.
Woman paraded naked in Bihar – in July-2014, a middle-aged woman of Sirwara village in Madhubani district of Bihar was paraded naked with blackened face in the village. Her crime was that she had allegedly helped the daughter-in-law of an influential person to escape.
Woman accused of witchcraft paraded naked in Odisha – another incident of July-2014 - a 60-year-old woman accused of practicing witchcraft was beaten, stripped, paraded naked and tied to an electricity pole in a village in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. Villagers blamed the death of an 18-year-old boy on the woman, saying she had practiced witchcraft on him even though medical records showed that he had died of malaria.