3-Year-Old Tortured, Murdered By Injecting Needles Into Body; Mom, Lover Sentenced To Death

A woman in India and her lover have been sentenced to death after the court found them guilty of brutally murdering the woman's 3-year-old daughter by injecting needles inside her body.

The child's mother, Mangala Goswami, and her lover Sanatan Thakur from Purulia, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, were ordered to be hanged to death Tuesday, for murdering the toddler girl in July 2017, The Indian Express reported.

The details of the horrific abuse came to light after the girl was brought to a hospital on complaints of fever and cold on July 11, 2017. The medical examiners noticed multiple scratches and wounds on the child and took an X-ray to evaluate her condition.

The medics were shocked to find seven four-inch needles inserted into the child's body parts including her chest, lower abdomen and private parts. Though doctors surgically removed the needles from her body, the girl succumbed to death on July 21, 2017, after battling for almost 10 days in the hospital.

Goswami got into a relationship with Thakur while she stayed with her child at his house as a domestic help after the latter got separated from her husband. Investigators determined that the minor girl was sexually tortured by Thakur and the duo decided to kill the child as they felt the girl was an obstacle to their relationship. The police believe that the needles were inserted as part of “tantric rituals” to cure the child's illness as Thakur was known to practice such rituals.

"Two needles were inside her liver, one in the kidney, one in the urinary bladder, another at the back of the bladder, one in the vagina and another in the lower abdomen,” a doctor who examined the child said, according to an earlier report by The Indian Express.

"The court said that a mother’s lap, which is the safest for any child, turned out to be the reason for the death of a helpless child," prosecutors said Tuesday after the sentencing, The Times of India reported. The court sentenced the couple to death after observing that the case was "the rarest of rare."