A 7-year-old Indian girl was miraculously rescued after she was allegedly buried alive by her own family.
The child managed to crawl out of the soil after she was strangled and buried by a couple claiming to be her relatives in a cane field in the Uttar Pradesh state district of Sitapur, local police told the BBC.
She was saved when a good Samaritan heard her cries for help and followed it to a moving patch of soil.
"When the girl became conscious, she began to move the soil on top of her and clambered out of the shallow grave," Rajesh Krishna, chief of Sitapur police, told BBC Hindi. "Then she sat there and cried loudly when the villager spotted her."
The girl was treated at a local hospital and is said to be doing fine. Her name is Tanu, according to local newspaper India Today. Local police showed her picture around to residents in her home village of Semri Guara, who said Tanu was last seen leaving with a man and a woman.
Police say the couple claimed to be her uncle and aunt and lured her by promising to take her to a fair. They then strangled her and buried her for dead before fleeing the village.
"There are strangulation marks around the girl's neck," Krishna told the BBC.
It is not clear why the uncle and aunt allegedly tried to kill their niece. Police are looking for the suspects as well as the girl's mother, who also fled.
The girl's father told police he is estranged from his wife and that he lives at a separate location, the BBC reported. He reportedly had not idea about the attack on his daughter, who lived with her mother.
