Rape, Murder of 8-Year-Old Asifa Bano Sparks Outrage, 'Religious Riots'

The murder of the young Indian Muslim girl, after she 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, has sparked outrage among people in India.

On Monday, a mob of lawyers tried to block the police from entering a courthouse in northern India to prevent them from filing a charge sheet, which implicates eight men in the rape and murder of 8-year-old Asifa Bano.

Nearly 40 lawyers have been charged with the criminal offense for trying to obstruct the police from filing the necessary paperwork for the court proceedings.  

Outrage grew after two ministers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attended a rally in support of the accused men.

What happened to Asifa?

Asifa Bano, who belonged to a Muslim family of nomadic shepherds of the Bakharwal community, went missing on January 10 from Rasana village, some 72km east of Jammu city. According to her family, she had gone to the forest to graze some horses. The horses returned, but she didn't. Several days later, her body crumpled and smeared in blood was found in the same forest on 17 January near Kathua city of Indian-held Kashmir.

The story made headlines this week when Hindu right-wing groups protested over the arrest of eight Hindu men. The case has become a religious flashpoint in an already polarised Indian region.

"Her lips were bitten. There were marks of violence including burns on her thigh and face, and her legs had been broken with some heavy objects,” her father Muhammad Yousuf Pujwala said, adding the women who gave  Bano a ceremonial bath before her burial "confirmed that her genitals were mutilated."

Naseema Bibi, who faintly whimpered her daughter's name repeatedly, described her daughter as a "chirping bird" who ran like a "deer." She looked after the herd when they traveled. "That made her the darling of the community," she said. "She was the center of our universe."

Investigation

Bano's family lodged an official complaint with the police, two days after she went missing. The officials showed some reluctance, alluding that the missing girl may have "eloped" with a boy and only began their investigation after the members of the community protested and blocked a highway. 

The police probe has revealed that Sanji Ram, the local temple custodian, was the mastermind behind keeping the news of the brutal rape and killing garbed, as he had agreed on paying over US$5,700 to create false evidence that would lead investigators away from him and his men. 

The police have arrested eight men, including a retired government official, along with four police officers and a juvenile in connection to Bano's death who was strangled to death by the perpetrators - all of them belong to a local Hindu community that has been involved in a land dispute with the Muslim nomads.

The official documents reveal, "the investigation conducted by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by SDPO Border Chadwal revealed that the accused kidnapped the minor girl and put her in a nearby cowshed at village Rassana, where he attempted to rape her and when she resisted, he killed her by way of strangulation."

Sources: BBC, the Guardian, telesur, The New York Times, Asia Times, NDTV