Panchayat poll rivalry took a shocking turn at a village of Mirzapur district in Uttar Pradesh, India when the minor daughter of a winning female candidate was allegedly gang-raped by her mother's rivals.

The victim later killed herself following police inaction, reports The Times of India.

The winning female candidate is a Block Development Council (BDC) member.

Sources said the daughter of the BDC member was allegedly raped by two men of a rival group on Wednesday night. When the police refused to file an FIR against the accused who had been named, the depressed girl committed suicide on Friday. It was only after her death that cops arrested the two accused.

‘The girl, a class 11 student, was kidnapped on Wednesday by two men when she was asleep in her house. They took her to a field and raped her. She returned home and told her mother about the assault and also named the two accused as those belonging to her mother's rival group,’ sources said.

On Thursday, the BDC member along with her daughter and other family members went to the police station to lodge a complaint. But, the girl's mother said, instead of taking down the complaint, the police gave only verbal assurances and asked them to return home. Traumatized and humiliated, the girl hanged herself in her house.

Cops finally lodged an FIR against Pappu Bahelia and Bindu Bahelia under relevant sections of IPC and POCSO Act 2012 and arrested both of them. The girl's body was sent for postmortem.

Contacted on Saturday, Mirzapur SP Arvind Sen admitted that the girl was gang-raped to avenge poll defeat. He told TOI that the accused were relatives of the losing candidate in BDC election.

On the delay in police FIR, he said that the matter was being investigated and action would be taken in this regard.