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As India seethes in pain and anger over the rape and murder of 8-year-old Muslim girl Asifa Bano from Kathua, news of another 8-year-old girl being raped in the country's northern state, Uttar Pradesh, has surfaced.
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The girl was attending a wedding with her family in the Etah district where her body was found limp next to an 18-year-old unconscious drunk man, who was arrested onsite.
"The girl is about eight-nine years old. She was raped and also she was strangled to death. The accused was nearby, he has been arrested," police officer Akhilesh Chaurasia said, NDTV reported.
Members of her family said that while they were busy the teen took her to a nearby half-built home, where he reportedly raped her.
"He took her inside and raped her and then murdered her. At 1:30 am, some function was on. He took the opportunity to drag her some distance away and rape her," said the child's father, according to NDTV.
Earlier this month, an 11-year-old girl in Surat was raped and murdered by strangling and her body was dumped. The police report said she had 86 injuries and was also brutalized with blunt objects. The post-mortem report suggested some wooden object was used to cause the injuries.
"Going by the nature of the injuries, they seem to be caused in the period ranging from one week to one day prior to the recovery of the body, suggesting that the girl might have been held captive, tortured and possibly raped," the Press Trust of India, quoted the doctor involved in the case as saying.
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The latest child rape news comes as Asifa Bano's case has sparked nationwide protests, where thousands of people have taken to the streets to denounce the heinous act, demanding the government take action and bring the culprits to justice.
Bano was abducted and brutally gang-raped for three consecutive days by two to three men from the dominant Hindu sect, in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, in January.
Commenting on the cases Tuesday Nobel laureate and children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi called the rape situation "a national emergency", with nearly 100,000 such cases pending in the courts.
"Each time a daughter is raped and killed, India’s soul is raped and killed," Satyarthi said during a release of a report which outlines how long it would take the courts to process cases of sexual abuse against children.
According to government figures, nearly 18,862 child rape cases were registered in 2016, meaning over 50 each day. This amounted to nearly half of the total 40,000 cases of rape reported that year, up from 25,000 in 2012.
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