lucknow

Updated: Jun 09, 2017 07:56 IST

A couple facing financial hardship allowed an exorcist to sacrifice their 15-year-old daughter and rape her body in Kannauj Tuesday night after being promised that they would get five kilos of gold.

They never found the gold.

The victim’s father, Mahaveer Prasad (55), who is a jeweller, then complained to the police against exorcist Krishna Sharma for kidnapping his daughter, Kavita.

The police found the body on Thursday.

Sharma, who occasionally worked as Mahaveer’s driver, was arrested on Wednesday from his village in Thatiya. Police said he told them that he advised Mahaveer and his wife Pushpa (50) that if they sacrificed their daughter they would get five kilos of buried gold within hours of the ritual. Sharma also told the police that Mahaveer had been under monetary constraint.

On Tuesday night, they all went to Annapurna temple where they performed prayers before heading for a peepul tree between Piparia and Badhosa villages. Sharma said the girl, who was semi-conscious, was stripped for the ritual in front of the parents. Then he strangulated her as a part of the ritual and the dumped the body in a nearby field.

While hiding the body of the girl, Sharma raped it as the parents stood nearby. He then slightly cut open the neck to collect blood to be offered to the deity.

Additional superintendent of police, Kannauj, Keshav Goswami said the police had recovered the body from the field and sent it for post mortem. The girl’s parents have been taken into custody for questioning.

The couple has another daughter who is married and lives just two kilometres away from the spot where Kavita was killed.