A woman was gang-raped and murdered in a temple ‘by a priest and his disciples’ before her body is dumped outside her home in latest shocking sex attack in India.
The 50 years-old woman was gang-raped and murdered by a Hindu priest and two of his ‘disciples’ before her body was dumped outside her home.
Police arrested the priest on Thursday while his two male followers had been arrested on Wednesday
He was found in a hut in a forest near to his village after police received reports he had been hiding there.
District magistrate Kumar Prashant said the victim had gone to the temple, in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh, before being allegedly being attacked and her body being left outside her home around midnight.
Prashant said: ‘The family frequented the temple so the accused knew where the victim lived.’
The priest claimed the victim had fallen into a well and he and his ‘disciples’ had rescued her and dropped her home.
However, Prashant said the victim was already dead when she was found by her family outside their home.
Prashant said: ‘According to the post-mortem report, she died due to shock from excessive internal bleeding and her rib was fractured … She also had injuries and lacerations to her private parts.’
Senior district police official Sankalp Sharma said that all three men have been accused of gang rape and murder.
The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, said on Wednesday that ‘stringent legal action will be taken.’
‘The accused cannot be spared at any cost,’ he wrote on Twitter, adding that he had asked the state’s special task force to coordinate with the district police in the investigation.
India is one of the world’s most dangerous places for women, with a rape occurring on average every 15 minutes based on federal data.
Budaun police have also launched an internal inquiry at the Ughaiti Police Station after officers failed to register the complaint from the victim’s family members.
The officer in charge of the station has been suspended.
The news comes less than a month after it was revealed that a 35-year-old woman was gang raped in India, only to then be raped by a ‘police worker’ when she reported the crime.
India is one of the world’s most dangerous places for women, with a rape occurring on average every 15 minutes based on federal data.
