In another horrifying incident, a seven-year-old girl was found hanging from a tree at Nandakumar in East Midnapore district of West Bengal on Thursday morning.
Even as her parents alleged that she was sexually abused before being killed, an angry mob lynched one of the three accused.
Senior police officials in West Bengal told reporters that a case of rape and murder has been initiated. Parents of the girl said she had gone out to buy puffed rice from a local grocery store on Wednesday around 7 pm. She went missing thereafter till her body was discovered on Thursday.
The police say since the main accused, Ratan Das, was a tantra practitioner, the girl’s death may have been a ritualistic murder.
No sooner had the news of the girl hanging from a tree in a field some distance from her home spread, angry villagers attacked Ratan, whom the parents suspected had assaulted the girl. Locals caught hold of him and two of his associates.
While the police rescued them and got them admitted to a local hospital, Ratan succumbed to his injuries. The mob also ransacked his house and set it on fire.
The bereaved parents said they were facing problems with Ratan over the last few days. They claimed that since he could not find a way out of the dispute, he had resorted to the crime to teach the family a lesson. East Midnapore’s Superintendent of Police, Sukesh Jain, told reporters that anti-riot police had been deployed in the area.
The incident, which comes close on the heels of a six-year-old girl’s rape in a Bangalore school, resembles the Badaun case of Uttar Pradesh in which two teenaged girls were allegedly gang-raped and murdered. Their bodies were found hanging from a tree the morning after they went missing.
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