Indian rape victim, 10, gives birth to girl

A 10-YEAR-OLD rape victim whose plea for an abortion was rejected by India’s supreme court has given birth to a baby girl, a doctor said yesterday.

The youngster was allegedly raped several times by an uncle who has been arrested. The Press Trust of India (PTI) said that the girl was unaware she had delivered a child.

Her parents, who will put the baby up for adoption, told her she had a stone in her stomach and had surgery to remove it, PTI said.

Last month her parents asked the country’s top court to allow her to have a late-term abortion but the request was turned down. Indian law does not allow medical terminations after 20 weeks unless there is a threat to either the life of the mother or her child.

“The girl is doing fine, she is recovering. We expect she will be discharged early next week,” said Dasari Harish, who heads a committee overseeing the girl’s care.

The girl, whose identity has been kept secret, delivered a girl by caesarean section in a state hospital in the northwestern city of Chandigarh, said Harish, who is a hospital physician. “The parents of the girl have refused to take custody of the child, and have agreed to her adoption through the state agency. They said they don’t even want to see the child,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The pregnancy was discovered when the girl was taken to the hospital last month after complaining of stomach pains, and was found to be about 30 weeks pregnant.

India has a grim record of sexual assaults on minors with 20,000 cases of rape or sexual assaults reported in 2015, according to government data.

In May, a court allowed another 10-year-old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather to undergo an abortion.