Six men jailed over eight-year-old’s rape and murder in India

A court has sentenced three Hindu men, including a police officer, to life imprisonment for kidnapping, raping and murdering an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Indian-controlled Kashmir in a case that has exacerbated tensions in the disputed region.

Judge Tejwinder Singh sentenced three other policemen to five years in prison for destroying evidence, prose cut or SantokhSinght old reporters. The judge ac quitted another defendant due to insufficient evidence.

An eighth suspect – a minor – will be tried separately by a juvenile court, Mr Singh said.

The girl, who was a member of a nomadic tribe, was grazing her family’s ponies in the forests of the Himalayan foothills when she was kidnapped in January last year.

Her mutilated body was found in the woods a week later. The case sparked protests across Kashmir, a Muslimmajority region where rebels have been fighting for years for independence or unification with Pakistan and there is great distrust of the government.

Mr Singh said prosecutors plan to appeal to a higher court and seek the death penalty for the three defendants who received life sentences.

Thousands of members of a radical Hindu group had demanded the release of the defendants, insisting they were innocent.

The trial was shifted to Path ankot,a town in neighbouring Pun jab state, following accusations that local Hindu leaders and politicians were trying to block the investigation.

The prosecution said the girl was raped in a small village temple in Kathua district after having been kept sedated for four days and was then bludgeoned to death.

The girl’s father, Mohammed Akhtar, said the men should be “punished speedily, not just convicted”.

“Our family has gone through hell,” he said. “Our hearts are bleeding. These beasts should be hanged.”

India has been shaken by a series of sexual assaults in recent years, including the gang rap e and murder of a student on a New Delhi bus in 2012.

That attack galvanised a country where widespread violence against women had long been quietly accepted.

While the government has passed a series of laws increasing punishment for rape, it is rare for more than a few weeks to pass without another brutal sexual assault being reported.

This case has become one among many high-profile ones that prompted India to pass a new law that introduced the death penalty for anyone convicted of raping a child under 12.

However, it is still left to the judge’s discretion to decide whether or not to hand out a death sentence.