India outrage mounts over gang rape, murder of eight-year-old

India's prime minister Narendra Modi on Friday (13) promised justice after nationwide outrage mounted over the brutal gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old-girl.

Demonstrations were held in New Delhi and other cities as horrific details emerged of the murder of the Muslim girl, who was repeatedly raped while being held for five days in the city of Kathua in Jammu, including at a Hindu temple.

"The incidents being discussed for the last two days are definitely shameful for any civil society. We are all ashamed as a society and a country," Modi said in a speech in New Delhi.

"I want to assure the country that no criminal will be spared, justice will be done and completed."

Earlier, the country's women's minister called for the death penalty for child rapists in a video message posted online.

"I have been deeply, deeply disturbed by the rape case in Kathua and all the recent rape cases that have happened on children," Maneka Gandhi, the women and children's minister, said on Twitter.

Gandhi said her ministry would seek an amendment to India's Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, "asking for the death penalty for rape on children below 12 years".

The Kathua killing has shaken India in a way reminiscent of the fatal gang rape of a Delhi student on a bus in 2012 that made headlines around the world.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party, led a candlelight march late Thursday to the India Gate monument in Delhi -- the site of mass protests after the 2012 attack -- to highlight the "unimaginable brutality" of the latest killing.

"Like millions of Indians my heart hurts," Gandhi said at the midnight rally. "India simply cannot continue to treat its women the way it does."

Vikramaditya Singh, who joined protestors at India Gate later Friday, said deep reforms were needed to improve women's rights in India.

"The women in this country are the victims of these crimes. Besides taking action in this case, we need to look at the... upbringing and education of men in our society," Singh said.

Eight people have been arrested over the killing, including four police officers and a minor. All are Hindus.

- Lost humanity -

The victim, whose identity was protected by a court order Friday, was murdered in January in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

According to the charge sheet, she was abducted by the minor and an accomplice.

The girl was forced to take sedatives and during five days in a shed and then a Hindu temple, she was repeatedly raped by the juvenile and different men, including a police constable.

She was finally strangled and beaten with a stone. According to the charge sheet, one of the attackers raped her just before she died.

Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state, but the Jammu region in the south, where the rape and murder took place, is Hindu-dominated.

The case has heightened fears of communal tensions in the region. Muslim activists have demanded action against what they see as a crime against their community while some right-wing Hindu groups have argued that the accused were unfairly charged.

This week, a crowd of Hindu lawyers tried to stop police from entering a court to file charges against the accused men.

Separately, a senior lawmaker in Uttar Pradesh state faces arrest over the rape of a 17-year-old woman. The lawmaker is from Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.

The alleged attack occurred last year but only started making headlines again after the woman tried to set herself on fire outside the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's residence last weekend.

High-profile names from the world of cinema and cricket joined the outrage over the Jammu crime in a country were nearly 40,000 rape cases are reported every year, according to official figures.

"What is happening to the world we live in???" Bollywood star Anushka Sharma, who is married to Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, wrote on Twitter.

"These people should be given the most severe punishment there is! Where are we heading as humanity? Shaken to my core."

Cricketer Gautam Gambhir blamed India's "stinking systems" for what some have described as a rape epidemic.

"Come on 'Mr System', show us if you have the balls to punish the perpetrators, I challenge you," he tweeted.