KOLKATA, INDIA // A teenager is supected to have been raped and murdered in eastern India after protesting against village elders’ treatment of her father.
“Police arrested three people after the girl’s father lodged a complaint that she was raped and murdered,” said James Kujur, an additional superintendent of police.
“Her father named 13 persons in the complaint. We are investigating the case,” said Supt Kujur, who visited the crime scene.
“The girl went missing after she protested at the village council, who had called her father asking him to settle his dues for hiring a power tiller from a villager.”
Elders of the village council in West Bengal state instead turned on the 16-year-old on Monday night and demanded she lick spittle off the ground, the NDTV network quoted villagers as saying.
Village elders still hold huge sway in deeply impoverished Indian villages and often act as a parallel legal system, settling disputes and handing down judgements.
Police said the three men arrested were members of the village council who were being questioned, but no charges had been laid.
Council elders told local media they were not involved in the girl’s death and said they had not assaulted the father.
Police found the girl’s body on on Tuesday morning on railway tracks near her home in Dhupguri village 680 kilometres north of Kolkata.
The body has been sent for post mortem examination as police attempt to unravel yet another case of suspected sexual violence.
India introduced tougher laws to deter rapists following public outrage over the 2012 fatal gang-rape of a student on a moving bus in New Delhi.
But attacks against women have continued unabated in many parts of the country.
* Agence France-Presse
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950