The woman had also been kicked in the stomach, punched in the eyes, police said. (Representational)
A 56-year-old woman was raped, brutalised with an iron rod before her head was smashed with a boulder in a blood-curdling incident in Chhattisgarh, the police have said.
The woman, who had a mental disability, had resisted rape and was found last Wednesday so badly mutilated that the police in Janjgir-Champa district thought she was killed in a road accident.
The autopsy report revealed the horror.
An investigation by the police and security camera footage found that she was savagely assaulted and dragged by someone on the road.
She had been kicked in the stomach, punched in the eyes and assaulted with an iron rod.
The woman had lost her parents a few years ago and used to survive on whatever locals gave her.
According to the police, a 31-year-old man has been arrested in the case.
"31-year-old Kishan Yadav was arrested after the probe. He confessed to the crime. He said when the victim resisted, he held her by the hair and dragged her to a nearby isolated plot and tried to rape her," senior police officer Abhishek Pallava said.
"She kept on fighting, pushed him... infuriated, Yadav began beating her, forced himself upon her and killed her after the atrocities. He then fled the spot. The accused was arrested for murder and rape and is in jail," he said.