Mukhtaran Mai, 33, a schoolteacher from the Punjab, was raped on the orders of an illegal tribal council in May 2002 after members of a rival clan accused her teenage brother of having an affair with a higher-caste woman.

Six men received death penalties for their alleged roles in the rape after Miss Mai defied local custom and testified against them. Her bravery won international acclaim and the case served to highlight the mistreatment of women in rural Pakistan.

However, in March a lower court acquitted five of the alleged rapists and commuted the death sentence of another to life in prison. Eight others, most of them members of the village council that ordered the rape, had already been acquitted.

But yesterday the Supreme Court overturned the previous rulings. It said that possible punishments for the men would be considered at a future hearing.

Scores of supporters congratulated Miss Mai outside the courtroom. “I am happy and hope that those who humiliated me will be punished,” she said.

Her fight against repressive feudal justice has won her praise at home and abroad. Miss Mai, from Pakistan’s most backward region, has become a symbol of the struggle of women in a country where hundreds are raped and killed every year in so-called honour attacks, many perpetrated by the victims’ own families.

Her legal victory came a day after the Government returned her passport and lifted travel restrictions imposed on her. The case had acquired a political dimension last week when she was stopped from visiting the United States on the instruction of President Musharraf.

Miss Mai had been invited by human rights groups to honour her for her courage and to tell them how they might help the cause of oppressed women. But Mr Musharraf said that her visit would have projected a bad image of Pakistan.

“She has been invited to bad-mouth Pakistan,” the President said during a state visit to New Zealand. The administration confiscated Miss Mai’s passport and confined her to Meerwala, her home village in southern Punjab. The Government finally freed her under pressure from Washington. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, raised Miss Mai’s case with the Pakistani Foreign Minister last week.

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