On Tuesday, the now 17-year-old appeared at the Rama Mandi district courts in Punjab, only to have the hearing postponed. Singh approached him with the offer of an out-of-court settlement of some sort. He promised to give the boy a ride to town on the back of his motorbike, The Indian Express reported. But the brick kiln laborer allegedly had no intention of offering any such settlement.

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Instead, he was allegedly out for revenge.

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Authorities say he drove the boy out to a canal, where he tied him to a tree, beat and cut him before slicing off both of his hands at the wrist in a personal version of Old Testament, lex talionis-style retribution.

“[Singh] took him near a dried up canal, beat him up badly and then tied him to a tree and finally hacked his hands off,” senior Bathinda police officer Swapan Sharma told the AFP. “There is nothing below the wrists now.”

The boy likely would have bled to death on the edge of that dry bed, but some nearby villagers heard his desperate screams of writhing pain and came to his aid.

“A few villagers heard the juvenile’s cries and ran towards the canal. They found the victim bleeding profusely,” Sharma told The Indian Express.

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They found the boy on the ground, alone save for his severed appendages that lay beside him.

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“The father had fled by then,” Sharma added.

According to the AFP, the police claimed to have gathered the bleeding teenager and his now-detached hands, rushing them to the Bathinda hospital.

“Locals alerted police and we rushed to the spot. We picked him up, his hands, and took him to the hospital,” he told AFP.

The Indian Express, however, reported that villagers brought the boy to the hospital.

Gruesome photographs show the boy reclined on a stretcher, wearing only jeans, the knees stained orange with dried blood. His arms end in bulbs of bandages where his hands should be. Snugly on his head is a cap of bandages.

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The police have charged the father with attempted murder and are searching for him.

In 2014, an enraged father who learned that his daughter was pregnant by a rapist, reportedly invited the man to dinner, before torturing and killing him. The man, who turned himself in to police, said he took matters into his own hands fearing justice would not be served.