One more Kathua! 8-year-old girl raped, murdered in Uttar Pradesh

When the country was finding it hard to console itself over the heart-wrenching rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua inside a temple, another girl of the same age was raped and strangulated in Uttar Pradesh.

The incident took place in a village in Etah where the eight-year-old girl was attending a marriage function with her parents.

An 18-year-old teenager has been arrested by the police. He was found lying next to the victim’s body in an inebriated state, reported NDTV.com.

“The girl is about eight-nine years old. She was raped and also strangled to death. The accused was nearby, he has been arrested," police officer Akhilesh Chaurasia said.

At around 1:30 am when the loud music was playing, the accused took the girl to a half-built house when her parents were busy and allegedly raped her and strangled.

"He took her inside and raped her and then murdered her. At 1:30 am, some function was on. He took the opportunity to drag her some distance away and rape her," the news website quoted the child's father as saying.

A case has been registered against the accused teen under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences or POCSO Act.

This was the second child rape case to be reported in last few days. Earlier, in a heart-wrenching incident that shook the collective conscience of India, a little girl, also eight-year-old, was kidnapped and raped repeatedly before being murdered brutally inside a temple.

She was held in captivity in a small village temple in Kathua district for a week in January, was kept sedated and sexually assaulted once again before she was bludgeoned to death.

The incident triggered a massive outrage among the people who took to streets to protest the inhuman act. Kathua Rape-Murder Case: What we know so far