Jaipur: Every male between the ages of 10 and 60 was stripped down to his underwear in a northwestern Indian village as the village council investigated a rape and murder, officials and villagers said Tuesday.

The 500 male villagers dressed in just their briefs and appeared before the "panchayat" or village council as it investigated the brutal rape and murder on Monday.

"There is a tradition that the whole village offers to be part of the investigative process if any crime is committed in the village," Tara Rawat, the chief of Boraj village in the state of Rajasthan, said Tuesday.

The council was looking at the men to see if it could find any signs of a struggle that would link one of them to the rape but the search did not yield a suspect.

Police found the badly mutilated body of 35-year-old Gita, who used only one name, on a hill near the village. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed to death with a sharp instrument, and raped.

The area is 386 kilometers (240 miles) northwest of New Delhi.

According to Shilpa Choudhary, a senior local police official, the village council's investigation had no legal sanction.

"But since this kind of an investigation could help the police in getting some kind of lead for further investigation we allowed it," he said.

Village councils wield great influence in rural India and ensure that local customs are rigorously followed.