Mandsaur: A seven-year-old girl was abducted and brutally raped in Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur in a grim reminder of the 2012 Nirbhaya case in Delhi where a nursing student was sexually assaulted by six people onboard a private bus.

Doctors treating the girl said there were several bite marks on her body, her nose was badly injured and rectum was ruptured, indicating that an object had been inserted into her privates. They had to cut some nerves to perform three surgeries to save the girl and her condition is stable now, they added.

On Friday, police arrested one more person in connection with the crime. Aasif, 24, was arrested a day after prime accused Irfan, 20, was nabbed by the police on Thursday.

The incident dates back to Wednesday when the girl, who was waiting for a family member to pick her up from school, was abducted. The accused raped her, slit her throat and then taking her to be dead, dumped her body at a vacant plot.

The case led to protests in Mandsaur, with demonstrators taking to the street over the dismal law-and-order situation in the state. They also forced shutdown of markets, schools and colleges, demanding that the accused be hanged at the earliest.

Backing the death sentence, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said rapists were a “burden on the earth” and do not deserve to live. He assured that the case would be handed over to a fast-track court. “If required, we will approach the high court and the Supreme Court,” he added.

However, the Opposition was not convinced and launched an attack on the Shivraj government. Senior Congress leaders, including Sundarlal Tiwari, Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh and MPCC president Kamal Nath, demanded that the girl be airlifted to a major hospital in Delhi or Mumbai for better treatment and the state government bear the expenses for the same.

The girl’s family had also said it wanted her to be shifted to Bombay Hospital in Indore instead of MY Hospital where she is being treated at present.

A team of National Commission for Protection of Children’s Rights will visit Indore on Saturday and summon the police officers involved in the probe, besides meeting the girl and her family.