Six men have been convicted of involvement in the rape and murder of eight-year-old Asifa in Kashmir.
Asifa was part of the Gujjar Bakarwal community, a group of Muslim nomadic herders in the region. According to the charge sheet, she was grazing her family’s ponies in the forests of the Himalayan foothills when she was drugged and kidnapped. The investigation revealed the girl had been sedated, gang-raped and strangled with her own scarf; finally her head had been bashed with a rock leading to her death in January 2018.
Asifa’s lifeless body was later found in a nearby forest.
The abduction, rape, and murder was part of a plan to remove the minority nomadic community from the area, it was disclosed. The police charged Sanji Ram, a retired government clerk, with plotting the crime as part of a plan to rid the area of the Muslim nomads.
In total there are eight people accused of involvement in the case. The seventh man, named as Vishal, was found not guilty on Monday, while the eighth, a juvenile, is currently awaiting trial.
The case sparked huge controversy and even resulted in rallies protesting the arrests of the suspects by the police. In one instance, lawyers physically tried to block police officers from filing the charges, claiming Hindus were being unfairly targeted.
The case sparked outrage and led to the introduction of the death penalty for rapists of girls below the age of 12 in India.
India has long been plagued by violence against women and children. Reported rapes increased 60 percent, 40,000 people, from 2012 to 2016, according to government statistics, and many more go unreported, especially in rural areas.
