In a gruesome incident a Kachin schoolgirl, Nhkum Hkawn Din (15), daughter of Nhkum Yawng Shawng and Maran Nu Bren was gang raped and killed on July 27 (Sunday) by Burmese Army soldiers in Bhamo District in Kachin State, northern Burma, locals said. Her body bore stab wounds in seven places and her eyes had been gouged out. It was a calculated act of perversion by the soldiers.

Nhkum Hkawn Din was an eighth grade student in the government State High School in Momauk also called N'mawk. She was gang raped and killed in a paddy field near her village called Nam Sai situated between Momauk and Bhamo by Corporal Aye Thein and two other colleagues in the village-based army post headed by Sergeant Thet Htun of the Light Infantry Battalion No. 437, said villagers of Nam Sai.

She was on her way to the paddy field carrying rice for lunch for her elder brother near Nam Sai village when the three soldiers began following her. Some villagers even remember seeing the girl being followed by the soldiers at about 9 a.m. on Sunday when she left her home. She was waylaid later by the soldiers. She lived in Block 1, Nam Sai village with her family. Her parents and her brother came to know of the incident by evening and lodged a missing diary with the police.

According to Hkawn Din's family, Hkawn Din's body was found three days after she went missing on July 30, 200 feet from the army checkpoint on the road leading to the Sino-Burma border set up for collecting money from cattle merchants. The body had been buried naked.

She had been stabbed in seven places on her body. Her skull was smashed, there was a stab wound under her right shoulder, her neck was slashed, her eyes had been gouged out with a knife, and her face was badly mutilated. There were stab wounds in her abdomen and her private parts, said her family.

The police station in Momauk was informed as soon as Hkawn Din went missing and soon after her body was recovered. But the police told the victim's family "We cannot take any action without concrete evidence against the soldiers," said villagers of Nam Sai.

Meanwhile, the local military authorities are yet to investigate and take action on the killing and rape of Hkawn Din, according to villagers of Nam Sai.