5-year-old Indian rape victim loses battle for life

A 5-year-old girl has died after being raped in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, an official said.

The girl suffered cardiac arrest and died late Monday at a hospital in Nagpur city in neighbouring Maharashtra state where she was being treated for injuries from the April 18 assault, said Bharat Yadav, collector for Seoni district, where the attack occurred.

She had also suffered severe injuries to her vagina and was on a ventilator.

Two men have been arrested in connection with the attack, he said.

Her kidnapper seized her after promising to buy her bananas from a nearby shop, a police official said yesterday.

The girl was lured by one of the men to a farm, where she was then raped by the other man, who was a friend of her parents, Yadav said. The parents, poor construction workers, were at work when the attack occurred, he said.

Ravi Manadiar, an administrator at the hospital, said the girl suffered a brain injury when the men tried to smother her cries and was in a coma from Apr 20 until she died.

P A Sriram at the hospital said: “She died from a cardiac arrest at 7.45pm on Monday. We were taking all measures ... but yesterday her condition got bad and her blood pressure went down. She was not reacting to medications.”

India has seen a recent sharp rise in the numbers of rapes and sexual crimes against women and children. Officials say the spike has resulted from more people reporting the crimes.

Earlier this month, another 5-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped and tortured by two men who then abandoned her in a locked room in New Delhi. She is still recovering at a hospital in the city.

Police refused to register a case when the girl’s parents reported that their daughter was missing. Hundreds of people protested outside police headquarters in New Delhi for three days, angry over allegations of police inaction and indifference to the parents’ complaints.

The attacks on the young girls come four months after the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus sparked outrage across India about the treatment of women in the country. The December attack spurred the government to pass tough laws for crimes against women, including the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rape attacks that lead to the victim’s death

The number of reported sexual assaults of girls under the age of 18 has climbed steadily in India since the 1990s, and reported rapes of girls under the age of 10 have more than doubled to 875 from 1990 to 2011.