The parents of an eight-year-old British Sikh schoolgirl has alleged that their daughter was killed by health workers in India in a failed attempt to harvest her organs.
Gurkiren Kaur Loyal was being treated for dehydration in a small clinic in Punjab when staff reportedly gave her a mystery injection.
"Within a split-second Gurkiren's head flipped back, her eyes rolled in her head, and the colour completely drained from her. I knew they had killed her on the spot. I knew my innocent child had been murdered," her mother Amrit Kaur Loyal told the 'Birmingham Mail'.
According to Gurkiren's family, the girl was then subjected to a "medieval" post-mortem during which all her major organs were removed in a bid to hide the truth of how she had been killed.
It was only once her body was flown home to Britain that they discovered her organs were missing and only her eyes remained.
Local police are believed to have taken their statements but the family is unsure if a proper investigation was carried out.
Their local councillor in Birmingham, Narinder Kooner, and Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood have now joined the family's campaign to press the Indian and UK governments for answers.
"This was an absolutely horrific ordeal for the family to go through and we are trying to work with the Foreign Office and the Indian High Commission to try to get her organs returned," Kooner said.
"It is imperative that we have the chance to independently establish the cause of death with the authorities in the UK," added Mahmood.
The schoolgirl from Nishkam School on Soho Road in Handsworth was on her first foreign holiday visiting her grandmother, who later died.
Besides her mother, she was joined by her postal worker father Santokh Singh Loyal and 17-year-old brother Simran.
Gurkiren was taken to the clinic in Punjab after feeling sick and was placed on a drip after blood tests revealed she was free of infection.
Under pressure to help her after she received the injection, medics transferred her to a nearby hospital but she could not be saved and later died.
"We can confirm the death of a British national in Punjab on April 2, 2013. We provided consular assistance to the family at this difficult time," the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said while reacting to Gurkiren's death.
