Pakistani gang rape victim Mukhtaran Mai (C) is flanked by well-wishers and journalists while leaving the country's Supreme Court in Islamabad, 28 June 2005.

Pakistani gang rape victim Mukhtaran Mai speaks to journalists while leaving the country's Supreme Court in Islamabad, 28 June 2005. (Xinhua/AFP photo)

Beijing June 28 -- Pakistan's Supreme Court has ordered 13 suspects in a high-profile gang-rape case to be re-arrested and overturned lower court rulings that acquitted them. 

    The ruling came a day after the victim, 33-year-old Mukhtar Mai, appealed the acquittals in a dramatic appearance at the court on Monday.

    The decision cast aside a series of conflicting rulings by several lower courts that had drawn international condemnation.

    Mai, 33, launched an appeal on Monday against the acquittals of five men, who had been sentenced to death for the June 2002 attack.

    The men's convictions were overturned in March but they were quickly rearrested on the orders of the government.

    They were then freed again earlier this month by the Lahore High Court.

    Mai was raped in June 2002 on the order of a council of village elders in Meerwala, allegedly in retaliation for her 13-year-old brother's illicit affair with a woman from a higher-caste family.

    Mai and her family deny any affair ever took place and say the brother was in fact assaulted by members of the other family.

    (Source: CRIENGLISH.com)