London, June 26 : Austrian incest fiend Josef Fritzl is expected to go on trial before the end of the year, say authorities.

Fritzl has been accused of imprisoning his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years and fathering seven children with her.

Frank Cutka, a court spokesman, said the trial is likely to begin this autumn or winter and preparations are running "at full speed".

The 73-year-old monster has confessed to holding Elisabeth captive as a sex slave in a windowless dungeon he built beneath his home in the town of Amstetten, west of Vienna, reports Telegraph.

Austrian prosecutors have said Fritzl should be charged with murder after one of the seven children he fathered with Elisabeth, 42, died shortly after birth in the bunker.

He confessed to hurling the baby's lifeless body into a heating oven three days after its birth in April 1996.

The Fritzl family – his wife Rosemarie, 68, his daughter Elisabeth, and her children Stefan, 18, Lisa, 15, Monika, 14, Alexander, 12, and Felix, five, are all recovering and their condition is improving "faster than expected," a hospital spokesman said. (ANI)