A 13-year-old Japanese girl suffocated after she was tied up and had water poured over her by her father and a monk who were trying to expel an "evil spirit", Japanese media said on Tuesday.
Atsushi Maishigi, 50, turned to the monk to help cure his daughter Tomomi's mental and health problems. The monk, who belongs to a religious group deriving from a Buddhist sect, said the youngster was possessed by an evil spirit, TBS TV channel said.
"The two men [the father and the monk] are suspected of having conspired in what they call 'waterfall service'... They allegedly strapped the victim to a chair with belts and doused her face with water," on the night of August 27, a local police spokesman said.
A similar incident took place in central Russia's Voronezh earlier this year when a married couple were charged with killing their daughter in an attempt to exorcise her of demons.
