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| Asifa Bano - the eight-year-old Muslim girl who was raped and murdered in India |
The child had been
attending the festivities with her parents, when 18-year-old Sonu Jatav
lured her away to a nearby building, where he sexually abused her and strangled
her, police said.
The horrific crime has
further shaken India, which is still reeling from the shocking gang-rape and
murder of another eight-year-old who was kidnapped and brutalized in a temple
few days ago.
Jatav had been hired to help out at the wedding and is thought to have been familiar to the girl as they were from the same village.
He allegedly lured her
away from the party at around 1.30am, and took her to an under-construction
building nearby.
Her parents and others
in the wedding party started looking for the girl shortly after and soon found
Jatav, drunk and asleep, next to the child's body, NDTV reports.
'The body of the girl was found in an under-construction house in the vicinity of the marriage venue.,' Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Chaurasia told FreePress Journal.
'A rope was found tied
around the neck of the girl.'
Local television
channels showed the girl's relatives crying as her dead body was carried from
the scene, covered in a white sheet.
The incident took place just days after the mutilated body of rape victim Asifa Bano was found in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir state.
Little Asifa was
kidnapped by a Hindu gang trying to drive the Muslim nomadic herders - to
which she belonged - away from Jammu and Kashmir.
Police say the gang took
her to a Hindu temple, where they kept her for three days, subjecting her to
repeated sexual abuse, before killing her.
One of the men involved ordered another attacker to delay her murder so he could rape her one last time, police say.
Eight men, including
four police officers and a Hindu temple custodian, appeared in court yesterday,
pleading not guilty to rape and murder.
The temple custodian,
retired public servant Sanji Ram, is accused of conspiring with four police
officers, a friend, his son and a juvenile nephew to kill the girl and destroy
crucial evidence.
Disgust over the
horrific crime led to protests in cities across India over the past few days,
with anger fuelled by support for the accused initially shown by ministers from
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
The protests have also
focused on another rape incident allegedly involving a BJP lawmaker in the
crime-ridden, most populous, poor northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
More rallies demanding
action against rapists and violence against women were expected on Monday in
the capital and Ahmedabad, the state capital of Modi's home state of Gujarat.
The national outrage
over the Kathua case has drawn parallels with the massive protests that
followed the gang rape and murder of a girl on a Delhi bus in 2012, which
forced the then Congress-led government to enact tough new rape laws including
the death penalty.
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| One of the men accused of involvement in the case is escorted by police at the District and Sessions court in Kathua on Monday |
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| One of the eight on trial for Asifa's brutal rape and murder is temple custodian Sanji Ram, pictured arriving in court yesterday, who is accused of inciting his nephew to abduct the child |
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