LUCKNOW: Police have arrested two men over the gang-rape of a teenage girl whose body was found hanging from a tree, a senior officer said Monday, a grim reminder of a similar case in the same state.

The girl, reportedly 15 and from one of India’s low social castes, was strangled — allegedly by three men — on Friday night outside her village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Her body was found the next morning hanging by her scarf from a tree about a kilometre from her home in Bahraich district, said police Superintendent Salik Ram Verma. Two men were arrested and “the third accused is on the run”, Verma said.

The girl had left her sleeping family to secretly meet one of the men, only to discover that he had brought along two of his friends who attacked her. “When the girl resisted their bid, she was raped and later strangled. To make it look like a case of suicide, they hung her body from a tree and left the spot,” Verma said.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2016