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Police have arrested three men over the suspected rape and murder of a teenager who had protested against village elders' harassment of her father in northeastern India, an officer said on Wednesday.
The suspects have not yet been charged in the girl's death and are currently being questioned.
The father of the 16-year-old said she went missing after trying to save him from being attacked by village elders as punishment for failing to repay a loan, according to the officer.
Elders of the village council in West Bengal state appeared to have turned on the girl on Monday night and demanded she lick spit off the ground, India's NDTV network quoted villagers as saying. The girl's body was found on Tuesday morning on railway tracks near her village, police said.
Council elders told local media they were not involved in the girl's death and said they had not assaulted the father.
The girl had begged the elders not to beat up her father, who had been brought before them over the loan to borrow a tractor, local media reported.
Village elders still hold huge sway in deeply impoverished Indian villages and often act as a parallel legal system, settling disputes and handing down judgments.
"Police arrested three people after the girl's father lodged a complaint that she was raped and murdered," additional superintendent of police James Kujur told AFP news agency.
"Her father named 13 persons in the complaint. We are investigating the case," said Kujur, who visited the crime scene in Jalpaiguri district.
The girl's body has been sent for postmortem examination as police attempt to unravel yet another case of suspected sexual violence.
India introduced tougher laws to deter rapists, following the 2012 fatal gang rape of a student on a moving bus in New Delhi that garnered international outrage.
But attacks against women have continued unabated in many parts of the country, including the killing of two teenage girls whose bodies were found hanging from a mango tree in Uttar Pradesh state earlier this year.
Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse
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