A nine-year-old girl was gang-raped allegedly by her stepbrother and his friends, who were instigated by her stepmother, in Kashmir's Baramulla, reports NDTV.


The horrific details emerging from the probe say the child's eyes were gouged out and her body was burnt with acid before being dumped in a forest near her home in Uri.

The girl's stepmother, 14-year-old stepbrother and three others have been arrested. The police call it an open-and-shut case.

The decomposed body of the girl was found in the forest on Sunday last.

"We started investigation immediately," said Mir Imtiyaz Hussain, a senior police officer at Baramulla. A special team formed to investigate the murder uncovered a horrifying story of jealousy and revenge within a family.

"It was found that the stepmother had been nursing a grudge against the non-local wife of her husband, and her children," said Hussain.

During interrogation, the girl's stepmother allegedly said her husband would spend more time with his second wife and the nine-year-old was closest to him among all his children.

The police said tension had been rising in the family.

"The woman conspired to kill her stepdaughter. She took her to the nearby jungle where she asked her 14-year-old son to rape the girl," the police officer said. "The girl was gang-raped at the instance of her stepmother and in her presence," Hussain said.

The stepmother strangled the girl and her son struck her head with an axe, killing her on the spot, the police officer said.