By Matters India Reporter
Bangalore: The Council of Catholic Women of India (CCWI) has condemned the gang-rape of five NGO workers in India’s Jharkhand state.
“We condemn the increasing incidents of brutality against women and children and resolve to raise the issue at all fora, demanding protection and justice,” Juliet Ramamurthy, council president told Matters India.
She said the council discussed various issues affecting women, especially violence against women spreading in the country., during the council’s June 23-24 annual general body meeting at Bengaluru, southern India.
The CCWI is one of the premier women’s organizations in the Catholic Church in India. Established in 1964, it has undertaken manifold empowerment programs for women. It advocates gender justice in society and the Church.
The survivors were members of an 11-member team that went to Kochang, a remote village in Khunti district, to perform a street play on migration and human trafficking.
The survivors, a married woman and four girls, were performing a street play in a Church school on June 19 when a group of men arrived on the scene and took them to a nearby forest at gunpoint where the crime was perpetuated, police said.
The women worked for Asha Kiran, an NGO of Ursuline Sisters.
Meanwhile the National Commission for Women has formed a three-member team to visit Khunti district and look into the case.
The team would be led by under-secretary Preeti Kumar, who would travel to Khunti with a junior technical officer and a lawyer to take stock of the situation, said NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma.
Sharma also said the NCW has also written to Jharkhand Director General of Police D K Pandey to probe the matter properly and has directed him to apprise the commission about action being taken in the matter at the earliest.