NEW DELHI: A seven-year-old girl was found hanging from a tree on Thursday in a village in eastern India after locals suspect she was raped, the latest in a string of reported attacks against children.

Angry villagers sought revenge after discovering the body in West Bengal state, hunting down and attacking three men they accused of kidnapping, raping and murdering the girl.

“I am at a local hospital for the girl’s post-mortem while those three suspects are also admitted at another hospital with serious injuries, “sub-inspector Shankar Das said.

“The situation in the area where the incident happened is tense,” Das said, referring to the villagers who were demanding that the suspects also be hanged.

Media reported that one of the suspects had died from injuries sustained in the attack by villagers, but this could not be confirmed.

The girl had gone missing close to her home in the state’s East Midnapore district on Wednesday evening, sparking a search by her concerned family and villagers, police said.

“We couldn’t find the girl since last evening... Then this morning around 9:30, we were on our way out and found the girl hanging from a neem tree,” an unnamed villager told NDTV news channel.—AFP

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2014