A 10-year-old Indian girl was beheaded by her grandfather, who believed that sowing seeds mixed with her blood would yield a bumper crop.

The killing, spurred by age-old superstitions, took place on Sunday in the tribal region of Sambalpur, 450 kilometres west of Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Orissa state, the IANS news agency reported.

The barbaric crime was detected after the villagers caught the man, Rajesh Hembram, and handed him over to the police.

Hembram, who owned 1.2 hectares of farmland, planned to sow seeds mixed with the blood of his granddaughter on Monday on Akshaya Tritya, a day considered auspicious by Hindus, police said.

"He cut off his granddaughter Bernaka Kandulana's head with an axe in a room when nobody was at home and drained her blood into a pot," P.C. Nayak, a police inspector said.

"We found some seeds in a steel pot that were mixed with blood," he said. Police said the man was arrested and had admitted his crime.

India has a centuries-old tradition of human sacrifices to appease deities, gain prosperity or ward off evil. Some cases are still reported around the country.

In recent years, parents in Orissa sacrificed their two sons on advice of an occult practitioner that it would please the gods and bring them prosperity.

Cases of such sacrifices have also been reported from other states such as Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

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