World News
Two Girls Aged Two and Five Tragically Raped in New Delhi
A young girl stands on a ladder in a slum area where a four-year-old girl was allegedly raped, New Delhi, India
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NEW DELI – Police deputy superintendent Pushpendra Kumar say’s police are searching for answers after two young girls, a Two and a Half-year-old and a five-year-old, were tragically raped in separate attacks in New Delhi, police said, in the latest incidents of sexual violence against girls and women in India.
The two-and-a-half-year-old girl was abducted from a religious event in west Delhi by two men on Friday night and raped before being dumped in a park near her home.
Family members found the child lying unconscious and bleeding in a park three hours after she went missing.
Police have not yet made any arrests over the incident.
Meanwhile, police said they were questioning three men arrested over the gang-rape of the five-year-old on Friday evening in east Delhi.
Both girls are in a stable condition in hospital, police said.
View of a slum area where a four-year-old girl was allegedly raped, New Delhi.
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The two attacks come as New Delhi grapples with a grim litany of sexual attacks against women – and in several recent cases, children – that have sparked outrage in India and abroad.
“We have launched a manhunt for the suspects. So far no one has been arrested,” Pushpendra Kumar, West Delhi police chief
Police have arrested three men in the case of the five-year-old victim whom tests showed was raped multiple times, after locals managed to catch her assailants and hand them over to the authorities.
The rapes occurred a week after a four-year-old girl was found dumped near a railway track after being raped and slashed with a blade.
A series of recent attacks has renewed public fury and horror over India’s inability to halt chronic violence against women and girls.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal expressed anguish over the rapes Saturday, terming them “shameful and worrying” on Twitter, but blamed his political opponent Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for the deteriorating security situation in Delhi.
“Repeated rape of minors is shameful and worrying. Delhi police has completely failed to provide safety. What are PM n his LG (lieutenant governor) doing?,” Kejriwal tweeted before heading to meet the victims in hospital.
Kejriwal and Modi’s administration are jostling for control of the capital’s police department, with Delhi city authorities saying they are unable to improve security for women.
They deflect the blame on to Modi’s central government which controls Delhi’s 84,000 police, the largest metropolitan police force in the world.
In December 2012, the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus led to a national outcry.
In response to that attack, the government doubled the maximum prison term for rape to 20 years, created special courts to prosecute cases more quickly, and made voyeurism and acid attacks specific crimes under the law.
India’s National Crime Records Bureau says more than 2,000 girls and women were raped in New Delhi in 2014.
