New Delhi, India.-An 8-year-old girl was sexually abused and subsequently killed by six men for days in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The death of the little girl shocked the country. Last Monday a court convicted the six men accused of the murder of the 8-year-old girl. The six men subjected the minor to repeated rapes during several. The main defendant, a local official now retired, and two members of the security forces accused of destroying evidence and accepting bribes to cover up the perpetrators are among the six convicted, told the media the prosecution’s attorney, Mubeen Farooqui, on the way out of the courthouse.
A seventh defendant has been declared innocent, he clarified, before adding that the penalty with which the culprits are punished will be announced by the court in the afternoon of today. The minor, belonging to a Muslim nomad community, it was abducted in January 2018 in the town of Kathua, an area of Hindu majority of Jammu and Kashmir. She was sedated and raped in a group for days before she was killed and abandoned in a forest, according to the investigation Police, who also concluded that the intention of the authors was to send a message to that community so that they would not return in the area. The case aroused a wave of indignation in India for the macabre of the event, with demonstrations calling for the death sentence of the defendants. But rape and murder also caused tension in the area, to the point where the authorities had to increase the security of the victims ‘ relatives and their lawyers, and move the trial to the neighboring state for the climate of insecurity. All defendants professed Hindu religion and crime took place in a small town temple, leading some local neighbors and politicians to ask for the immediate release of the defendants.
A group of lawyers tried to even prevent the police from filing charges in Kathua in April 2018. India has hardened anti-sexual assault laws after a young college girl died after being gang-raped on a bus in 2012 in New Delhi, an event that shocked the country and transcended its borders.
