NEW DELHI, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A 12-year-old Indian girl was beaten and then hanged by her mother for demanding she be sent to school, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The girl was beaten unconscious with a rolling pin by her mother in a village in Jodhpur district in the western desert state of Rajasthan this month.

"The mother thought she had killed the girl and, in panic, decided to make it appear like a suicide," a police officer was quoted as saying.

"She allegedly tied a rope around the girl's neck and hung her from the ceiling."

The woman has been arrested.

The girl's father, a labourer, said he and his wife could not afford a bicycle to send their daughter to school a few miles away.

Parents across large parts of rural India often prefer boys over girls because sons are seen as future breadwinners and are expected to look after them in their old age.

Girls, on the other hand, are seen as a liability for whom parents will have to pay a huge dowry to get married.

The report from Rajasthan came a day after police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh said a man who yearned for a son killed his 11-year-old daughter, cut her into pieces and threw parts of her body into a fire.

Millions of female foetuses have been illegally aborted in India over the past two decades, and the country's sex ratio of 933 females to 1,000 males is one of the world's most skewed.

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