Women as 'collateral' in Pakistan jirga justice

The rape of a teenage girl in revenge for a crime committed by her brother has left residents of Raja Ram in central Pakistan shaken and questioning a deeply entrenched system of village justice.
Last month, a council of village elders ordered the rape of the 16-year-old victim after her brother was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.
The ruling highlighted the role such councils -- known as panchayats, or jirgas -- play in the lives of many rural Pakistanis, who see the country's courtrooms as a distant presence.
The councils have traditionally enjoyed broad support, thanks to their ability to offer immediate justice, compared to courts that can take years to settle a criminal case, and as much as a decade to resolve a civil dispute.

But the recent ruling, which allowed a rape victim's brother to sexually assault another innocent girl, has unsettled Raja Ram, home to some 3,000 people.
"May God have mercy, it was such a strange day and it was such a big injustice," said villager Amina Bibi.

"In our area there is neither a school nor a hospital, and poverty and ignorance rules here... This incident is a mark of this ignorance," said 46-year-old Imtiaz Matila.
"It's a stain on the name of the panchayat," agreed another villager, 65-year-old Manzoor Hussain.
The girls have since been taken to a women's shelter in conservative Multan, Pakistan's fifth-largest city.

Raja Ram is just a few kilometres down the road, but feels a world away away from urban life.
Men sit around on charpoys, sheltering from the blistering heat, while women are conspicuous only by their absence, shielded from view behind the rough stone walls that surround each of the crudely built, single-storey houses.