A court in India has sentenced five men to death for the gang-rape and murder of a teenager, as well as the murders of her father and young niece.
The crime was committed in January 2021 when the men offered the girl and her family – members of a poor tribal community in the central state of Chhattisgarh – a lift on motorbikes while they waited for public transport.
They later beat to death the teenager's father, who tried to stop the rape, and killed her three-year-old niece, prosecutor Sunil Kumar Mishra told AFP.
The last victim was found unconscious by villagers a few days later and died on the way to hospital.
The five men were found guilty of rape and triple murder “and sentenced to death,” Mishra said on Thursday, a day after the verdict was announced by the court.
The sixth man “was convicted of the crimes, but his involvement in the rape was not proven, so he was sentenced to life in prison for the murders,” he added.
India has the death penalty, although it is rarely carried out in practice.
In 2022, the country of 1.4 billion people reported an average of nearly 90 rapes a day, but activists say many more go unreported.
The court is in the city of Calcutta in the east of the country sentenced a person to life imprisonment this week after he was found guilty of raping and murdering a 31-year-old doctor last year. The doctor's family broke down in tears, saying they were “shocked” by the verdict and hoped her killer would be hanged.
Bikas Das / AP
The discovery of her bloodied body at a public hospital in August caused a stir nationwide anger and protests on the chronic problem of violence against women.
The gruesome nature of the attack has drawn comparisons with Gang rape and murder 2012 of a young woman on a Delhi bus, which also sparked weeks of nationwide protests. Four men were convicted of the attack on the bus performed in March 2020.
Last week, more than four dozen men were arrested for repeated sexual abuse of a teenagerwho said about 60 men targeted her in the southern state of Kerala over several years.
The girl's childhood friend, as well as neighbors and family friends, are among the accused in the attacks, police told CBS News. BBC News. Among the accused are at least five students of her college and former classmates from her school, according to the Indian agency A minute of news.
The alleged abuse came to light last month when a group of counselors working under a government program visited her home.