Shame and horror. Again and again

5-yr-old brutally raped; cops accused of trying to bribe kin

NEW DELHI: A five-year-old girl was raped, battered, had a bottle and candles shoved into her vagina and was left to die in a locked room in east Delhi by her 25year-old neighbour before she was discovered two days later, lying in a pool of her own blood.

When her father went to the police for help, they gave him Rs2,000 to hush up the matter.

And when protesters gathered outside the hospital the girl was taken to, a senior police officer slapped a woman demonstrator.

Nothing has changed in the country that is insensitive towards its women and children, despite the outrage and government assurances that followed the December 16 gang rape of a 23-year-old on a moving bus in Delhi and her subsequent death.

The little girl was playing near her parents’ rented home in Dilshad Garden, a densely populated housing colony situated in east Delhi, last Sunday when she was abducted by Manoj, a tailor who doubles as a labourer. For the next 72 hours, she was raped and brutalized over and over again in a room right below her own house, as her family searched desperately for her.

CONTINUED ON P10 RELATED REPORT, P10

SONU MEHTA/ HT The 5-yr-old rape victim (covered with a sheet) is taken from the hospital, where she underwent a life-saving surgery.