A 10-year-old Indian girl has been threatened with death-by-stoning if she doesn't withdraw her case against an older man of a higher caste, the Indian Express reported Thursday. The parents allege that the man raped their daughter.
In a small village in which the vast majority of residents belong to the Lodhe Rajput caste, the girl's relatives, who are Dalit Indians, have been pressured to sweep things under the rug, the paper writes.
"We are so scared that we cannot go out of our house," the girl's mother told the Indian Express. "A day after the incident, all the Rajputs came and encircled our house. They told me to settle a price for my daughter and keep quiet about the case or else they would stone her to death."
The girl's mother also said the village's council leaders have taken the side of the girl's alleged rapist, according to the paper.
On Monday, news outlets reported that the girl had been imprisoned for hours after trying to lodge a complaint with police. While behind bars, she was allegedly blamed for her own rape, according to the Indo-Asian News Service.
CNN-IBN notes that at least two female officers at the station have been suspended over the incident.
The 10-year-old was found by her parents lying unconscious in a field on Sunday night, the Hindustan Times writes. That night, the girl was brought to police to report a man for raping her. The man was arrested, but denied the crime, saying only that he scolded the girl for stealing tomatoes, according to police superintendent Vaibhav Krishna, via the Telegraph. A medical examination of the girl was inconclusive.
India has received a huge amount of international attention in the wake of a young student's death from a brutal gang rape in New Delhi in December 2012. The incident sparked outrage across India, and one of the accused rapists, who died in police custody in March, is thought to have either committed suicide or been murdered.
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