10 year old girl attacked

13.12.2016 16:22

A SCHOOLGIRL was doused in kerosene, set on fire and thrown into a well after she tried to fight off rapists, the child has told police.

The girl, aged 10, was found after suffering burns to 60 per cent of her body in a Jharkhand village, eastern India.

Police have registered attempted rape and murder charges against two men who are missing, and detained five suspects for questioning, the Hindustan Times reported.

At the time of the alleged attack the child had been playing when the pair tried to lure her away with sweets.

The girl who was outside her home in Seraikela-Kharsawan district’s Kandra village on Wednesday morning refused.

But the men then dragged her to a stone-crushing unit in the village, police said.

There the pair stripped her and tried to rape her. 

The girl tried to fight them and tried to flee.

When the men caught up with her they set her one fire and left her in a dried well, officers claim.

A passing woman heard the girl’s screams and managed to get help to pull the severely burnt child from the well.

An official associated with the case told the Indian Express: “The victim gave her statement to the police. We have registered a case. 

“The girl said that she could identify the men, but did not know them by name.” 

Arvind Kumar Singh from Kandra police station said the girl’s family recently moved to Kandra from West Bengal, and police were investigating if an acquaintance may have been involved in the assault.

Sexual violence in India caused an outrage across the country and overseas in 2012, when a 23-year-old Delhi student was gang-raped on a moving bus and later died in hospital.

Mass street protests followed the attack about the high levels of violence against women, and prompted the Indian government to toughen jail sentences for rapists. 

Last year 34,651 cases of rape were reported in India, statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) showed. 

In 33,098 of those cases the victims knew their attacker.