In what’s being described as a “bone-chilling” incident, a nine-year-old girl in Jammu & Kashmir in India was allegedly gang-raped, her eyes gouged out, burnt with acid and then strangulated.
The victim’s stepmother, stepbrother and his two friends have been arrested in connection with the alleged crime after her decomposed dead body was found on Sunday in a forest near Uri, 70 kilometres from Srinagar.
The state police chief said the crime was “worse” than the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl earlier this year that sparked Hindu-Muslim tensions in the state.
“A bone-chilling story of gang rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl in by her stepbrother and 2 other accused instigated by her stepmother. A case worse than Asifa of Rasana Kathua,” Director General of Police Sheesh Paul Vaid tweeted.
Mr Vaid said the case had been solved with the arrest of five accused.
The victim’s father filed a police complaint after she went missing on August 23. The state police formed a special investigation team after her dead body was found.
"The SIT interrogated the suspects and during sustained questioning of the step-mother of the deceased, a bone-chilling and horrible account of murder and rape of the nine-year-old child came to light," Superintendent of Police Imtiaz Hussain Mir said.
He said the stepmother had been harbouring a grudge against her husband’s second wife and her children.
"During questioning, she revealed that her husband would mostly spend time with his second wife and the girl was dearest to him," the Press Trust of India quoted Mr Mir as saying.
He said after the stepmother hatched a plan to kill the girl, she was taken to a nearby forest area where the woman’s 14-year-old son and his three friends gang-raped her before she was strangled.
"While the step-mother strangulated her, the step-brother hit her head with an axe. Another accused gouged out her eyes with a sharp knife and then sprinkled acid on her body parts. Physical condition and preliminary forensic analysis of the body substantiated all these facts", Mr Mir told reporters.
He said the case had been solved with the arrest of all the accused involved and the recovery of all the material and weapons used in the crime.
In April this year, communal tensions flared up after the murder of eight-year-old Asifa Bano who was allegedly kidnapped, repeatedly raped and then bludgeoned to death in the town of Kathua in the same state. According to the police charge sheet, Asifa was locked up in a temple shed and given sedatives for three days and repeatedly raped by several men, including two policemen before she was bludgeoned to death.
India changed the law after the high-profile 2012 Delhi gang-rape in which a female medical student was raped and murdered in a moving bus. The changes included more stringent sentences for sexual crimes against minor victims and lowering the age of criminal responsibility for serious rape crimes to 16.
Vigil calling for justice in the rape and murder case of an eight-year-old nomadic girl, Asifa Bano, in Bangalore, India, 17 April 2018. Source: AAP
After the nation-wide protests following the rape and murder of Asifa Bano, India's parliament passed a subsequent law that now enables the courts to hand out the death sentence to those convicted of rape of children under the age of 12.
