Six convicted over notorious Indian gang rape of eight-year-old

Six Indian men were found guilty on Monday over the notorious 2018 gang rape and murder in India of a young girl that provoked horror and stoked inter-religious tensions and was know as the Kathua case.

The Kathua case contributed to the government imposing the death penalty for child rapists.

According to the charge sheet, the eight-year-old girl was abducted and taken to a village in the Kathua district of the northern Indian region of Jammu on January 10 last year.

In an ordeal lasting five days, she was sedated and held in a Hindu temple, repeatedly raped over five days and then strangled and beaten to death.

The six Hindu men were due to be sentenced later, prosecution lawyer Mubeen Farooqui told reporters outside the court in Pathankot, in Punjab state.

They face the death penalty with a minimum of life imprisonment. A seventh man was acquitted while an eighth person, who was underage, faces a separate trial.

The case sparked two days of violent protests in Jammu and demonstrations in several other places across India, including in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

 

Via BBC