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LAHORE, Pakistan, Monday (Reuters) Pakistan's leading rights group said it was shocked at the public humiliation of a woman councillor beaten and paraded naked through a village on the orders of a powerful landlord.

The News on Sunday newspaper said the incident happened on December 7 in a village near Sialkot, an industrial town north of Lahore.

It said in an ordeal that lasted several hours, the woman, the widowed mother of seven, was beaten, stripped and paraded naked through the village by the landlord and his sons after she refused to back his candidate in a local election.

Kamila Hyat, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the incident was not the first of its kind.

"At least four similar cases have been reported this year," she said, adding the incident was indicative of the low status of women in Muslim, male-dominated Pakistan.

"People think they have the license to humiliate women on some pretext or the other, to subject them to this kind of degradation," she said.

Hyat said more such incidents were inevitable unless the government took tough steps to ensure women's rights were upheld. 

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