A gang of men - including at least one police officer - allegedly raped and killed two teenage sisters in rural India then hung their bodies from a tree, authorities said today.
Villagers found the girls, aged 14 and 15, hanging in a mango tree hours after they disappeared near their home in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state.
They had gone into fields because there was no toilet in their home.
Hundreds of angry villagers crowded around the tree for the rest of the day, silently protesting alleged police inaction in the case.
India tightened its anti-rape laws last year, making gang rape punishable by the death penalty, even in cases where the victim survives.
The new laws came after the fatal gang rape in 2012 of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi that triggered nationwide protests.
In this latest incident, Indian TV footage showed the villagers sitting under the girls' bodies as they swung in the wind, preventing authorities from taking them down until the suspects were arrested.
Amid conflicting reports, police are believed to have arrested four men later in the day and were searching for three more suspects.
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