KUMAMOTO, Japan, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Police in Japan's Kumamoto prefecture say they arrested a monk and a 50-year-old man for killing the man's teenage daughter during an exorcism.
Police said 13-year-old Tomomi Maishigi suffocated to death after she was tied to a chair and doused with water to exorcise "an evil spirit," The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Wednesday.
Her father Atsushi Maishigi and Kazuaki Kinoshita, a 56-year-old monk, are being held on suspicion of causing bodily injury that resulted in death.
"My daughter was possessed," Maishigi said. "So we performed the ritual on her to exorcise the demons so she could get well."
During the ritual, performed under a concrete waterfall at a church in Nagasumachi, Maishigi held his daughter down while Kinoshita recited sutras, police said.
The girl reportedly suffered from mental and physical illness since she was in primary school.
Kumamoto prefecture is in south western Japan.
