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Toddler and five-year-old girl gang raped in India

The girls were seriously injured in separate attacks in Delhi on Friday night

Lizzie Dearden
Saturday 17 October 2015 07:36 EDT
A series of recent attacks have sparked renewed outrage in India
A series of recent attacks have sparked renewed outrage in India (SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images)

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A toddler and a five-year-old girl are in hospital after being gang raped in separate attacks in India’s capital city.

The two-year-old girl was found lying unconscious and bleeding in a park by her family three hours after she went missing in a western suburb of Delhi.

Police said she had been playing outside her home on Friday evening when there was a power cut in the area and she was reportedly abducted by two men on a motorbike.

A doll at the home of a four-year-old girl who was raped in Delhi last week
A doll at the home of a four-year-old girl who was raped in Delhi last week (EPA)

Deputy Supt Pushpendra Kumar said several men had been detained in connection with the attack in Ranhola but no arrests had been made.

The five-year-old girl was gang raped in a separate attack on Friday evening in Anand Vihar, east Delhi.

Two suspects, who were known to her family, were tracked down after she returned home crying and told her parents what happened, the Hindustan Times reported.

Members of the public who found the men allegedly beat them before handing them over to police.

Three men arrested in relation to that attack were being questioned as the two children remained in stable condition in hospital this morning.

Swati Maliwal, chair of the Delhi Commission for Women, called the crimes “absolutely disgusting”, asking on Twitter: “When will Delhi wake up?”

Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi, met their families today and challenged the government to intervene.

“Repeated rape of minors is shameful and worrying,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The Delhi Police has completely failed to provide safety. What are the PM and his LG (Lieutenant Governor) doing?”

A series of recent attacks has renewed public fury and horror over India's inability to halt endemic violence against women and girls.

Only a week ago, a four-year-old girl was found dumped near a railway track after being raped and slashed with a blade.

She underwent surgery for extensive injuries following the attack in a Delhi slum.

The gang rape and murdered a student on a Delhi bus in 2012 sparked global protests over women’s safety which resulted in harsher punishments for sexual violence.

India's National Crime Records Bureau says more than 2,000 girls and women were raped in New Delhi in 2014, although the crime is thought to be under-reported.

Additional reporting by AP

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