Horrific attacks on girls shock India as an eight-year-old girl is gang-raped and beaten to death with a stone, while a 13-year-old boy has his eyes gouged out in deadly torture.
- Two young women were murdered after being attacked on the streets of India
- A girl in Rajkot was lured into a bush, raped and then beaten to death
- Another had her eyes pierced and her mouth filled with mud before she was killed.
India has been shaken to its core after an eight-year-old girl was gang-raped and beaten to death with a stone, and a 13-year-old girl had her eyes removed in a fatal torture attack.
The attacks come amid a massive rise in violence against women and girls in India over the past decade.
Police in Rajkot, a city of two million people in the western state of Gujarat, said the eight-year-old girl’s body was found Saturday in an isolated spot behind a train station.
The force has since said it has arrested three people accused of kidnapping, raping and beating the unnamed boy on Monday.
Police said CCTV from the incident revealed one of the attackers lured her into a bush, before the other two joined them.
Police arrested three people over the attack in Rajkot, but Baerilly police are still searching for the person who attacked the 13-year-old girl.
The three attacked her before “hitting her head with a stone”, according to Additional Commissioner of Police Vidhi Chaudhary.
Chaudhary added: “The accused killed the girl because her father knew them and was afraid that she might tell him about them.”
Two of the alleged attackers reportedly fled the city after the body was found for fear of arrest.
In Baerilly, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a 13-year-old girl was found dead in a cane field after she went missing while returning home from school.
A senior police officer told the Times of India that her attacker had gagged the girl’s mouth with mud, pierced her eyes with sugarcane stalks and tortured her.
A member of the autopsy team told the newspaper that they are currently conducting tests to see if she was raped.
‘We have seen bruises near their private parts and samples have been taken to confirm sexual assault through laboratory tests.
‘There were seven deep wounds on the girl’s body. She must have gone through enormous pain. She was definitely tortured before the murder.
Senior police official Naipal Singh said in a statement: “The case is considered a priority and senior officials are supervising the investigation.” Four teams are working on leads and the forensic team is collecting evidence.
‘We are receiving support from the surveillance team and anti-social elements in the area under the scanner. We hope to make a breakthrough soon.”
Violence against women and girls in India has increased dramatically in the last decade.
The National Crime Records Bureau reported a 15.3% increase in crimes against women between 2020 and 2021.
Between 2011 and 2021, there was an 87% increase in crimes against women.
Last year, it was reported that an average of 87 new rape cases were opened every day in India.
