Jharkhand rape case: Minor girl set on fire in Chatra district, 15 arrested

Fifteen people, including the main accused, have been arrested in connection with the alleged rape and killing of a minor girl by setting her on fire in Chatra district of Jharkhand, police said on Saturday.

The victim was declared "brought dead" by doctors when she was rushed to a nearby hospital on Friday, police said.

"15 people, including the main accused, Dhanu Bhuiyan, have been arrested in connection with the case," said IG Sambhu Thakur, who is camping at the site and monitoring the investigation.

Following the rape incident and then informed about the same, the accused was imposed a fine of Rs 30,000 by the panchayat, besides being ordered to do 100 sit-ups.

Humiliated and angry, the accused had refused to obey the panchayat's directive and instead, went into the house of the victim with his henchmen. He thrashed the girl's parents, before setting her on fire, in front of them.

Asked if the girl was gang-raped, Thakur said it would be confirmed only after post-mortem.

The last near-century of American dominance was extraordinarily violent

John Dower is one the most preeminent historians of World War II’s Pacific theatre and the aftermath of the conflict in Asia. His book War Without Mercy (1986) described the racial component of the U.S. campaign against Japan. In Embracing Defeat (1999), he examined the post-war U.S. occupation of Japan. He has long taken a critical look at U.S. foreign policy, subjecting the vaunted ideals of America’s global pretensions to sceptical scrutiny. He’s not interested in “good wars” or “good occupations.” He describes the exercise of power, and it’s almost never a pretty picture.

In recent years, Dower has been extending his critical analysis both chronologically and geographically. Cultures of War (2010) was an initial effort to link the violence of World War II to 9/11 and the Iraq War. Now, with The Violent American Century, Dower deepens his analysis by addressing the emergence and expansion of American global power all the way up to the Obama era. Dower is particularly interested in connecting the dots between the United States that emerged victorious from World War II and the America of the 21st century that appears willing to do almost anything to maintain its status as the world’s only superpower.

Dower begins his story just at the moment when the United States is poised to become a global titan. It’s 1941, the year the United States officially entered World War II. It’s also when Time’s Henry Luce proclaimed the beginning of “the American century.” For all his talk of democratic principles and the American spirit, Luce was not naïve. He knew that America would have to use force – in some cases, overwhelming force – to establish its global position. The saturation bombing of Dresden and Tokyo followed by the nuclear attacks against Nagasaki and Hiroshima became the pivotal moments of “war and terror” on which the United States would secure its authority.
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