Modi vows justice after outrage

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday promised justice after nationwide outrage mounted over the brutal gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old-girl.

Demonstrations were held in New Delhi and other cities as horrific details emerged of the murder of the Muslim girl, who was repeatedly raped while being held for five days in the city of Kathua in Jammu, including at a Hindu temple.

Earlier, the country's women's minister called for the death penalty for child rapists in a video message posted online.

The Kathua killing has shaken India in a way reminiscent of the fatal gang rape of a Delhi student on a bus in 2012 that made headlines around the world.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party, led a candlelight march late Thursday to the India Gate monument in Delhi -- the site of mass protests after the 2012 attack -- to highlight the "unimaginable brutality" of the latest killing.

Eight people have been arrested over the killing, including four police officers and a minor. All are Hindus.

The victim, whose identity was protected by a court order, was murdered in January in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

According to the charge sheet, she was abducted by the minor and an accomplice. The girl was forced her to take sedatives and during five days in a shed and then a Hindu temple, she was repeatedly raped by the juvenile and different men, including a police constable. She was finally strangled and beaten with a stone. According to the charge sheet, one of the attackers raped her just before she died.

The case has heightened fears of communal tensions in the region.

High-profile names from the world of cinema and cricket joined the outrage over the Jammu crime in a country were nearly 40,000 rape cases are reported every year, according to official figures.

"What is happening to the world we live in???" Bollywood star Anushka Sharma wrote on Twitter. "These people should be given the most severe punishment there is! Where are we heading as humanity? Shaken to my core."

Cricketer Gautam Gambhir blamed India's "stinking systems" for what some have described as a rape epidemic.

"Come on 'Mr System', show us if you have the balls to punish the perpetrators, I challenge you," he tweeted.