RANCHI, April 3 -- A 35-year-old woman was arrested along with two others for allegedly killing her 13-year-old daughter in a 'sacrificial' ritual in Kushumbha village under Bishungarh police station limits in Hazaribagh district, officials said on Thursday. Those arrested include Reshmi Devi, the victim's mother; 55-year-old Shanti Devi, an occultist, and 40-year-old Bhim Ram, all of them from the same village. The matter concerns the recovery of the girl's mutilated body from a village field on March 25. Reshmi Devi subsequently registered a case with the Bishungarh police station alleging that the girl might have been raped before being killed. The girl allegedly went missing when she went to see the Ram Navami procession a night before. Following the widespread anger among the locals and demonstrations by political parties, the Jharkhand police director general of police instituted a special investigation team (SIT) that finally cracked the case leading to the arrest of the three on Wednesday. Officials said the victim was the youngest among the three sisters and one brother. Their father works in Maharashtra. Hazaribagh Superintendent of Police Anjani Anjan said Reshmi Devi often visited a 'tantrik' (occult practitioner) in her village to treat her 16-year-old son, who suffers from a mental and physical illness. "The occult practitioner told the mother that they needed to sacrifice a virgin girl to cure the son of all ailments. On March 24, the night of Ashtami, while the entire village was immersed in festive celebrations and witnessing the Mangla Julus (a Ram Navami procession), the girl was strangled at Shanti Devi's house, allegedly by her own mother and Bhim Ram," the SP said. In a statement detailing the allegations against the three accused, the police claimed that the tantrik inserted a wooden stick inside the girl's private parts, while Bhim Ram struck her head to obtain blood for the ritual. After killing the girl, they threw away the body in a garden. "It was a blind and suspicious case from the beginning as the body seemed to have been thrown in a place where it would be recovered easily. The sack used to dump the body was recovered about 200 metres away, which showed that the crime scene and the place of recovery were different," an official involved in the investigation said. Sharing the details of the investigation, SP Anjani Anjan said that the three tried to mislead investigators by claiming rape, which was not proven in the postmortem and forensic reports. "Bhim Ram also faces allegations of murdering his sister-in-law and another individual," Anjan added. As the investigation lingered, the Jharkhand High Court took suo motu cognisance on Monday of the alleged rape and murder of the girl and served a notice to the state administration and the director general of police. A division bench of Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad and Justice Sanjay Prasad took note of the incident based on media reports. Hazaribagh SP Anjani Anjan appeared before the bench and submitted a status report on the investigations. The issue also raised the political temperatures in the state, with the opposition BJP staging a 12-hour bandh in Hazaribagh on Monday to protest the killing. The party called for a Jharkhand Bandh on April 9 if the culprits are not arrested till then. Union minister Annapurna Devi and Jharkhand finance minister Radha Krishna Kishore, besides several others, visited the family in their village to show solidarity....