Uttar Pradesh student protest
Students hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against the killings of the teenage girls in Bundaun, Uttar Pradesh. Adnan Abidi/Reuters

A teenage girl in India was stoned to death by her dad and brother after they caught her dating a boy from another village.

Pratibha Khan, 19, was strangled and had her face "smashed beyond recognition", police said.

Her remains were found in fields close to her home village of Malira in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

A police spokesman said: "The post-mortem report showed that while the cause of death was strangulation, it appeared that she had been repeatedly struck by bricks and stones.

"Perhaps to hide her identity, some of the blunt force injuries to her face were made after her death, but most weren't."

"It looks like the brother and father dragged her to the fields and assaulted her with bricks and stones. They then strangled her and went on to smash her face beyond recognition."

One of the girl's other brothers Prabhat, 33, said: 'I am neither sorry nor surprised that my sister is dead. If what people say is true, then I am not surprised that my father and brother killed her.'

Shocked friend Alia Modi, 18, said: "I was walking home through the fields when I saw a body lying on the ground.

"It was covered in blood and when I looked at the face it was so badly damaged I didn't recognise it as Pratibha's.

"It was only later that I learnt who it was and I was simply horrified."

While being interviewed by police the pair admitted to killing her because she was love with another boy from a nearby village.

Uttar Pradesh shocked the nation last year when two teenagers were gang raped and hung from a mango tree.

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