An eight-year-old girl is gang-raped and murdered by a group of 12- and 13-year-old boys after being lured to a secluded area while playing in a park in India.

An eight-year-old schoolgirl was tragically gang-raped and murdered by a group of boys who lured her to a secluded part of a park where she was playing in India.

The three boys, aged 12 and 13, killed the girl in Nandyala district of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India before telling local police they had dumped her body in a nearby irrigation canal.

Her father reported her missing and had not seen her since Sunday, after she went to the park to play.

Police launched a formal search, questioning local residents and using sniffer dogs that led the search party to the three boys, who were believed to be attending school with the girl.

After police questioning, they admitted to luring her to a safe area before taking turns raping her.

Fearing punishment if the girl told her parents about the horrific attack, they killed her and dumped her body in a canal.

His body has not yet been found: police have sent several teams along the nearby Krishna river to search for his body.

As a result, local police are still treating it as a missing person case.

In India, women are increasingly subjected to sexual violence. In 2022, an average of 90 rapes were reported per day, according to data from the country’s National Crime Records Bureau.

The actual number of sexual assaults is likely to be much higher, as many will flatly refuse to report them due to a lack of confidence in the police’s ability to properly investigate crimes and fear of retaliation.

“We are seeing the worst phase of sexual violence and misogyny now,” said Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. DW.

‘This is the new India, where there seems to be a total breakdown of the rule of law, which directly affects women, as it is also a period of blatant consolidation of patriarchy.’