Eight-year-old girl is raped and murdered by a group of 12 and 13-year-old boys after they were lured to a remote area while playing in a park in India

• WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT
• The girl was playing in a park when she was lured to a remote place
• She was then raped and murdered before her body was thrown into a canal

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

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

She was reported missing by her father, who had not seen her since Sunday after she went to the park to play.

Police launched an official manhunt, interviewed local residents and deployed sniffer dogs, which led the search party to the three boys who, it turned out, went to school with the girl.

After being questioned by the police, they admitted to luring her to a safe area and raping her one by one.

Fearing punishment if the girl told her parents about the cruel attack, they murdered her and threw her body into a canal.

Her body has still not been found – police have sent several teams along the nearby Krishna River to search for her.

For this reason, the local police are still treating the case as a missing person case.

Women in India are increasingly exposed to sexual violence. In 2022, an average of 90 rapes were reported every day, according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau.

The actual number of sexual assaults is likely to be much higher, as many people simply refuse to report them because they do not trust the police’s ability to properly investigate the crimes and because they fear reprisals.

“We are currently witnessing the worst phase of sexual violence and misogyny,” Kavita Srivastava, general secretary of the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties, told DW.

“This is the new India, where there appears to be a complete breakdown of the rule of law, which is affecting women particularly directly, as it is also a time of blatant consolidation of patriarchy.”