A five-months-old baby has died after allegedly being raped by her 30-year-old cousin in India.
The girl’s parents had been enjoying a relative’s wedding in the northeastern city of Daudnager on Sunday night when the cousin asked his aunt – the baby’s mother – if he could take her daughter away to play.
Two hours later, a search party found the young girl lying unconscious on the wedding venue’s lawn – the accused sex attacker beside her.
The suspected child rapist, named as Pappu by the Times of India, fled but was arrested the next day.
Doctors at a trauma centre declared the girl had been brought in dead, before the distraught father formally filed allegations his nephew had raped and murdered his daughter.
The cousin had approached the baby’s mother, who was cradling the girl in her lap, at around 7pm on the night of the Madiaon wedding.
The mother agreed, but a sense of panic began to creep in when there was still no sign of the pair by 9pm.
A search party was launched and villagers joined in the manhunt – which was ended with the grim discovery of the motionless baby.
As the villagers cried they had found the girl, her parents rushed to the spot before identifying it as their child and racing to Vivekananda Polyclinic hospital which referred her to KGMU trauma centre where she was pronounced dead.
In the horrifying frenzy at the wedding, the cousin escaped but was detained by police the next day.
Sarvashresth Tripathi, deputy police commissioner, said the father had filed a case of murder, rape and kidnap to murder, according to the Times.
An autopsy will determine if the baby was raped, officials said.
