Reports say she was abducted while grazing her horses in a meadow, taken to a prayer hall nearby
Police say that Asifa was given sedatives and for three days, raped several times by different men. Asifa was eventually strangled on 17 January, something police say would have happened sooner had one man not insisted on waiting, so that he could rape her a final time.
, To add to the volatility of Asifa's case, police say she was killed in a Hindu temple and that the temple's custodian plotted her death as a way to torment the Bakarwals.
Details from the report revealed that the crime was fueled by religious and political tensions between Asifa's tribe, a group of Indian Sunni Muslims called the Bakarwal, and local Hindus who saw them as a threat.
The conspirators' motive for raping the child, according to the charge sheet, was to drive the Muslim family out of the area.
On Monday, a chaotic scene unfolded outside a courthouse in Jammu and Kashmir, as a mob of Hindu attorneys tried to physically stop police from filing charges against the men accused. The attorneys in a statement argued for a federal investigation, stating that the government had failed to "understand the sentiments of the people". Police still managed to complete the paperwork and charged the men, who include four policemen and a retired government official.
Protests have now spread across much of Kathua. Hindu activists argue that some of the police officers who worked on the case are, like Asifa, Muslims – and cannot be trusted, according to The New York Times. Dozens of Hindu women have helped block a highway and organise a hunger strike.
It also showed that local policemen were accused of perpetrating the crime. When Asifa's family reported her missing in January, among those sent to find her was Deepak Khujaria, a 28-year-old special police officer. Based on DNA evidence, he has since been accused of committing the crime.
some locals even defended the accused, since they were Hindu. Two Bharatiya Janata Party ministers from India's ruling party, who seek to preserve Hindu ideals, even attended a rally to support the accused. They have since resigned.
Talib Hussain, a Bakarwal social activist fighting on behalf of Asifa's family, told The New York Times that Bakarwal nomads for generations have leased land from Hindu farmers so that their animals can graze during the winter. In recent years, however, Hindus in the Kathua area have campaigned against the nomads,some of whom have decided to settle permanently in the area. Believed to be at the campaign's helm is the accused custodian, Sanji Ram.
