UP shamed again: 10-yr-old killed after rape

Days after the brutal killing of a toddler in Aligarh, a 10-year-old girl was allegedly raped before being strangled to death in Uttar Pradesh's Hamirpur district, about 200 km from here.

According to sources, the body of the girl, who hailed from the Scheduled Caste (SC) community, was recovered from a graveyard at Shivni village in the district on Saturday morning.

Police said that the girl, whose parents worked at a nearby brick kiln, were away for the work when the incident occurred. "She was sleeping outside her house in the village...she may have been abducted and raped...there were no clothes on her body...we suspect that she may have been raped before being killed," said a police official in Hamirpur.

The parents of the girl started searching for her when they did not find her at home after they returned from work. Some villagers found the body inside the graveyard at a little distance from the village, sources said.

Angry villagers blocked a busy road near their village and did not allow the police to send the body for post-mortem examination in protest against the incident. Police had a tough time in taking possession of the body.

Hamirpur police chief Hemraj Meena said that a case was registered and that special teams were formed to trace the culprit. "A medical examination will be conducted to ascertain if the girl was raped," he said.