Mutilated Body Of 8-Year-Old Rape Victim Found With Eyes Gouged Out, Fingers Crushed

An eight-year-old girl in India has been brutally raped and murdered. The girl's mutilated body with eyes gouged out and fingers crushed was found near her home, a day after she went missing, police said.

The unidentified girl from a village in Munger, in the Indian state of Bihar, went missing Wednesday afternoon. After several hours of search, the child's body was found from a brick kiln near her house. The police believe the girl's perpetrators raped her and strangulated her to death to conceal the crime, News 18 reported.

The girl went out with her father to the banks of the river Ganga for a bath Wednesday afternoon. The child had accompanied her father up to the riverbank near her home. The girl's father later sent her back, but she did not reach home after that.

"My girl would have been alive if I had not forced her to return home alone. We started searching for her after she did not return home till evening but we failed to find her,” the victim’s father said as per the outlet.

The family did not report the child's missing until her body was found Thursday morning, police said. The girl's right eye was gouged out by the killers probably with fingers and her fingers on one palm were crushed while she resisted the rape, Gaurav Kumar, a senior officer, told The Times of India.

According to the investigators, the girl was raped and murdered by perpetrators who must be familiar to her. However, the suspects have not yet been identified.

"Seeing the mutilated body, it seems the victim's perpetrators were known to her. The girl was murdered to hide the rape," a police officer said, reported News 18.

The child's body has been sent for an autopsy and the police have started an investigation. The investigators believe the child was murdered at the site where they found her body as there were bloodstains around.

Recently, a 9-year-old girl from India's capital city of Delhi was allegedly raped and murdered by a priest and three employees of a crematorium. The child's body was then reportedly cremated in a hurry without her parents' consent or informing the police. The police arrested the four suspects on charges of rape, murder and criminal intimidation.