Father of Indian girl who was gang-raped, bricked to death and fed to dogs tells of moment he found her

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

The father of an Indian woman who was brutally gang-raped, murdered and left to be eaten by stray dogs has described the moment he found her body.

Mahender Singh told MailOnline he found his daughter stuffed in a dustbin with "over 200 maggots on her body".

His daughter was on her way to work at the packaging department of a pharmaceutical company when she was reportedly abducted by a gang of men.

The 22-year-old was taken by the men - at least one of whom knew her - by car from Sonipat to the nearby city of Rohtak, Haryana state, where they raped her before smashing her skull with bricks and running over her body with a car after the threatened to go to the police.

Her body was found in an open field, where it had been partially eaten by stray dogs.

"Her body was unrecognisable," Mr Mahender said.

“When I arrived, her body was in a dustbin. No one had placed her body on a bed.

“She had over 200 maggots on her body but I picked her up in my arms and put her on a stretcher. It took doctors four hours to remove those maggots from her body.

“I managed to identify my daughter by her clothes and a chain her mother had given her a few days earlier. I will never be able to get that sight out of mind.”

A post mortem revealed her internal organs and genitals had been damaged beyond recognition and iron wires inserted into her mouth.

Her hair had also been torn out and scattered around where her body was found.

The woman's mother, Baed Kaur, said she had "never heard of a scene more horrendous than this."

"My daughter had always been afraid of being raped. She used to always ask me to lock the door if she was home alone.

"But look how she died. She experienced both in the most brutal way possible."

She described how she learned what had happened to her daughter.

"She'd left home at 8am that morning but when she hadn't returned by evening I got worried. My son and I went to the factory but it was closed. That's when we reported her missing.

"But it wasn't until neighbours came round and told me that my daughter had been raped and murdered in the most brutal way after they'd read it in a local newspaper."

Police have arrested two men for rape and murder and six more have been accused of involvement by the victim's mother.

Sexual violence against women is a highly-charged issue in India, where the horrific, fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012 sparked nationwide protests about entrenched violence against women and the failure of authorities to protect them.

As many as 10,854 cases of child rape were reported in India in 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.