Asia

Rape of 7-year-old in India marks the latest in series of attacks on girls

Her mother was by her bedside after the girl underwent hours of surgery.A 21-year-old has been arrested in connection with the rape, which occurred in the district of Shahdara in the northeastern part of the city, said Meghna Yadav, a deputy commissioner with the Delhi Police. Yadav could not provide further details, she said. But Swati Maliwal, chairwoman of the Delhi Commission for Women, said the girl was in extreme pain after the attack. "We are working out her rehabilitation plan," she told CNN. "It is very unfortunate that these rape cases are not ending in Delhi. Police resources continue to be extremely low in Delhi."In a series of tweets, Maliwal provided additional details of the attack, saying the girl, who comes from a poor family, had been lured to a park in Seemapuri, where the perpetrator assaulted her. She was bleeding "incessantly" after the attack, Maliwal tweeted. "Cannot describe the pain the little girl was experiencing. Already malnourished, she has a long struggle ahead," she added. "We are going to support her in her legal fight to ensure death penalty to her culprits. Will file compensation application & shall make all efforts to rehabilitate her."

India's scourge of rape

A string of attacks on girls in the last year have sparked outrage in India. The latest rape conjures memories of a December 2012 attack that put India's rape crisis under a spotlight. In that incident, six males boarded a private bus, grabbed a 23-year-old woman, incapacitated a man with whom she had gone to the movies and proceeded to take turns raping the woman while beating her with an iron rod. She died of organ failure after being transported to Singapore for further treatment. Four men were sentenced to hang, one committed suicide in prison in 2013 and a juvenile attacker was sentenced to three years in juvenile detention. More recently, the rape and murder of an 8-year-old Muslim girl stoked furor and religious tensions after police found the girl's body in a forest in the isolated Himalayan district of Kathua. She had been kidnapped while grazing horses January 12. The girl was drugged, gang raped and strangled before her body was dumped in the forest five days later, police said. Three police officers and a former government official were among the eight Hindu men arrested in the attack. Police in May announced they had arrested a primary suspect in the gang rape and burning death of a 16-year-old girl in northeastern state of Jharkhand. The man arrested was one of 20 accused in the attack. Supporters of President of the Indian National Congress Party Rahul Gandhi hold placards in reaction to the recent rape cases in India during a rally  in New Delhi on April 29, 2018.A village council ordered the men to do situps and pay a 50,000-rupee ($750) fine, enraging the accused rapists, who then assaulted the victim's parents and set their house on fire, killing the girl inside, said Ashok Ram, the officer in charge of the local police station. Weeks later, a man raped a 17-year-old in her relative's home in Jharkhand state before setting her ablaze and fleeing, police said.

A rape every 13.5 minutes

In another shocking case, an 11-year-old girl in Chennai was drugged and gang-raped in July by 17 men, ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, who worked in the building where she lived, according to police. Other recent alleged victims include a 15-year-old in Bihar state who told police in July she was repeatedly raped by a principal, two teachers and 16 boys over the course of six months, and a 17-year-old girl who in April accused an Uttar Pradesh legislator of participating in her gang rape over the course of nine days in June 2017. In the latter case, the girl's father was fatally assaulted the day after she attempted to set herself on fire in front of the home of an Uttar Pradesh official. Passersby stopped her. In April, India introduced a temporary law that makes raping a minor or participating in a gang rape punishable by death. But Maliwal said on Twitter it had yet to be implemented in Delhi. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 39,000 rapes in India in 2016 — a rate of roughly one rape every 13.5 minutes. The total marked a 12% spike over the previous year.

CNN's Sugam Pokharel and Anna Coren contributed to this report.

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