District magistrate Jitendera Singh said the suspects abducted the girl from Chatra, a village in eastern Jharkhand state, while she was attending a wedding ceremony on Thursday. Some of them allegedly raped her before letting her go home.
The village council leaders fined the suspects 50,000 rupees (£569) the next day. Singh said the suspects beat up the girl’s relatives for complaining about them and burned her to death after finding her at home alone on Friday.
Singh said police were searching for the main suspect.
India has been shaken by a series of sexual assaults since 2012, when a student was gang-raped and murdered on a Delhi bus. That attack galvanised a country where widespread violence against women had long been quietly accepted.
Although the government has passed several laws to increase punishment for the rape of an adult to 20 years in prison, it is rare for more than a few weeks to pass without another brutal sexual assault being reported.
India’s government last month approved the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under the age of 12.
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