'Honour' protected inhumanly in Pakistani

KARACHI: Pakistani police have arrested six men who allegedly raped a teenage girl and forced her to parade naked through a village in a so-called 'honour punishment', officials said on Wednesday.

The men kidnapped the 16-year-old girl in Habib Labalo village in southern Sindh province on Saturday because her cousin had an affair with a woman from their family, said local police officer Aftab Farooqi. 

Two of them raped her and other members of the group later forced her to walk naked through the streets before villagers intervened, Farooqi said quoting the girl's family members and local residents.

"We have arrested six people so far and we will soon be able to arrest all those named in the case," Farooqi said, adding that a medical report 'confirmed' she was raped.

Dozens of women are killed or raped every year in deeply conservative rural Pakistan supposedly in the name of protecting family honour over allegations of illicit sexual relationships.

People in a central Pakistani town on Sunday tied a woman and her lover to a tree and stoned them to death. 

The rape case mirrors that of Pakistani rights campaigner Mukhtar Mai, who was gang-raped and left naked on the orders of a tribal council in 2002 as punishment for her brother's alleged affair with a woman from another tribe. 

Mai's case caused an international outcry. She was later barred from leaving the country to address human rights groups in the United States.

Pakistan last year brought in a law introducing the death penalty for honour killings. Gang-rape is also punishable by death in Pakistan.