A 12-year-old girl accused of stealing a bowl of wheat was brutally killed by a couple in Uttar Pradesh, police said on Monday.
The couple, Mahapeeri and Dheer Singh, allegedly killed Soni in Godhna village of Muzaffarnagar district, 350 km from Lucknow, after they found a bowl of wheat missing from their kitchen.
"On the pretext of offering sweets to Soni, the couple residing in the same village on Friday took her to their house where they thrashed the girl and banged her head repeatedly against the wall," police inspector Aman Singh told IANS on phone.
After beating the girl, the couple left her in the fields and escaped. Locals spotted Soni and rushed her to the hospital where she died on Saturday morning.
"Soni's postmortem report reveals she died of head injuries," said Singh.
A case has been registered against the couple at the Purkaji police station by the girl's father Rajbeer alias Godhu.
Mahapeeri and Dheer Singh are absconding.