Jammu, Aug. 21 -- A 12-year-old girl is dead, inhabitants of Chatroo area of Kishtwar are on the streets in fury, and a government school headmaster sits in police custody - accused of a betrayal so complete that it began in his own classroom and ended, according to police, with a desperate, fatal attempt to erase the evidence of his crime.
The minor victim, a Class 5 student at a government middle school in the Chatroo belt of Kishtwar district, belonged to a poor family. Ten days ago, by most local accounts, she came down with a fever - an ordinary complaint that would unravel into something far darker.
Her mother took her to a local practitioner. What the examination revealed instead of a simple illness was a pregnancy, in a child bare...