Thousands of people took to the streets of Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday (13) to demand the death penalty for a man who raped a three-year-old girl, amid growing anger over sexual violence in the troubled Himalayan region.
Dozens of people were injured, most of them police, when officers fired tear gas and used batons to disperse stone-throwing demonstrators who had blocked part of a highway, police said in a statement.
The child's rape came weeks after the suicide of a girl who police say was repeatedly raped by her own father, and has intensified public concerns over sexual violence.
Shops, businesses and schools were also shut across the Muslim-majority region in response to a strike called by separatist cleric Moulana Masoor Abbas to protest the rape.
"We called for strike today to make people aware about growing incidents of rapes in the valley. We want justice for the victim," Abbas told reporters.
Police said the child was lured into an empty school by a neighbour and raped last Wednesday. Her mother followed her screams to find her bleeding inside a bathroom.
One person has been arrested over the attack.
Some protesters said they no longer had faith in authorities to keep women and girls safe, calling for those found guilty of such crimes to be given the death penalty.
"If the culprits of such crimes are hanged, then such incidents can come down," protester Nafia Khursheed told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Authorities appealed for calm after the protests, which followed a pledge by Muslim clerics in the region to dedicate their Ramadan sermons to women's rights.
The Muttahida Majlis-e-Ulema (MMU), a council of Muslim religious leaders and scholars, said they wanted to address what they said was a rise in sexual violence in the region.
Crimes against women jumped 8% to 3,168 cases in 2017 from 2,915 the previous year, according to government figures.
Last year, nationwide protests flared over the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state, prompting the federal government to introduce the death penalty for rapists of girls under the age of 12.
The outrage drew parallels with massive protests that followed the gang rape and murder of a woman on a Delhi bus in 2012, which led to tough new rape laws.
Agatha Christie boarding the EET Salon at lunchtime on the train from Bulawayo to the Cape. In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the world. Her husband Archie had been invited to join a trade mission to promote the British Empire Exhibition and Agatha was determined to go with him The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie under a tree on Honolulu beach after surfing, 1922. Agatha and her husband Archie were permitted to take a short holiday away from the 1922 trade mission and chose Honolulu where they learnt how to surf on longboards. Here Agatha purchased a surf suit in the local style, better suited to the demands of surfing than her swim attire for bathing in Torquay. The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie relaxing during a sightseeing tour, Tajoura, Libya, 1955. Agatha and her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan had invited Agatha's daughter Rosalind and grandson Mathew to join them on a tour of the ancient sites of Leptis Magna and Sabratah during December 1955. The Christie Archive Trust
Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, 201720th Century Studios
Still from Murder on the Orient Express, 201720th Century Studios
Still from And Then There Were None, 2015, BBC Agatha Christie Limited
Still from And Then There Were None, 2015, BBCAgatha Christie Limited
Still from And Then There Were None, 2015, BBCAgatha Christie Limited
Agatha Christie’s Remington typewriter from 1937 The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie’s Remington typewriter from 1937The Christie Archive Trust
Agatha Christie’s study notes for her pharmaceutical exam taken in 1917The Christie Archive Trust
Letter from Agatha Christie to her second husband Max Mallowan, in December 1930. Agatha writes to Max describing her return home from their honeymoon, on the Orient Express. Documenting how the train had been halted by floods and her fellow travellers' reactions, this event would inspire her to write Murder on the Orient Express a few years later.The Christie Archive Trust
Cover of typescript ofHouse of Beauty, Agatha Christie’s first short story written when she was just a teenager.The Christie Archive Trust
Box for Tabloid Veronal tablets,1910-1940 Science Museum Group
Chemical storage bottle and glass stopper, labelled ‘POISON phosphorus P’,1907-1912Science Museum Group
Empty poison bottle for aconite, iodine and chloretone solution,1925-1960Science Museum Group
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