When three young girls failed to return home from school one day last week, their mother went to the local police in Lakhni village in central India. She got little help.

Two days later, when the brutalized bodies of the girls aged 11, 9 and 6 were found in a well on the outskirts of the village, their tiny slippers found next to empty liquor bottles, police registered a case of “accidental death.”

It was only after villagers blocked traffic and protested outside the police station that a case of murder, kidnapping and rape was registered.

On Thursday, police arrested three “suspects” for questioning.

It is yet another story of gender-based violence in India that saw unprecedented protests after a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was raped, an iron rod shoved into her on a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16. She later died. The trial of the five accused in her rape and murder is still ongoing.

Violence against women is endemic in India. A poll of global experts in June labelled the country the worst place to be a woman among the G20 countries, citing infanticide, child marriage and dowry deaths. The same poll put Canada at the top.

But after the horrific rape and murder in December and subsequent nationwide protests, women’s groups were confident things would change, even if slowly.

“I’m still hopeful things will change,” said Vrinda Grover, a Delhi-based human rights lawyer.

She called the rape and murder of the three sisters “tragic” but pointed out something vital has changed in the past months: “People are not scared to report, to say what happened. It’s not a stigma as it was. Look at these villagers . . . how they forced police to take action”

Lakhni village is about 85 kilometres east of Nagpur, a prosperous city of about 4.5 million in central India. It is like any other village: there are mud houses with thatched roofs, hand pumps for drinking water, open sewage drains. Lush farms surround the village.

It is from here that the three little girls went missing on Feb. 14, their grandfather told reporters in India.

He said his 11-year old granddaughter went to get her younger sisters from school that afternoon.

He never saw the three girls again. “My granddaughters were probably lured away on the promise of chocolates or kurkure (a snack),” he said.

An Indian newspaper quoted a police officer in Lakhni saying that some “blanket-sellers” from western India were in the area just before the girls went missing.

They have since disappeared, said the report.

The mother of the girls, a daily wage labourer, lost her husband about four years ago.

She told CNN-IBN television news channel that “the police did not take the case seriously and did nothing for two days.”

She has not been named.

One police officer has been suspended for not acting promptly, Indian Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel, who represents the area in Parliament, told reporters in New Delhi. “It is unacceptable. All of us have to hang our heads in shame,” The Associated Press quoted Patel as saying.

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The fatal gang rape of the physiotherapy student in a moving bus in New Delhi spurred the government to hurry through a new package of laws to protect them.

A new law has increased the sentences for rape from the existing seven to 10 years to a maximum of 20 years. It also provides for death penalty in extreme cases of rape that result in death. It has also made voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and trafficking of women punishable under criminal law.

With files from Star wires services

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