An eight-month-old baby girl barely made it alive after she was brutally raped by her 28-year-old cousin. The incident happened on Sunday in India's capital city of New Delhi, which has been dubbed the rape capital of the nation due to increasing rape cases being reported there.
The parents of the baby were working when the incident occurred. On returning home, the mother found the baby bleeding and immediately took the infant to a hospital. The baby had to undergo a three-hour surgery as she suffered injuries to her vital organs.
The accused was arrested on Monday.
The Chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, Swati Maliwal, said she was frustrated with the apathy shown towards such incidents.
"I can still hear her screams and cries. As DCW chief, I feel horrified at this abuse of a child, I feel as if I have been raped. She is on life support right now," Maliwal told Al Jazeera, adding that tougher actions should be taken to combat sexual violence.
"In every case of child rape, we need to deliver the death penalty within six months of the crime. At present, cases drag on for years. There is no deterrence, no fear. The implementation of already existing laws is also terrible," Maliwal said.
December 2017 marked the fifth anniversary of Nirbhaya case, the brutal Delhi gang-rape that set in motion a movement against sexual assault in India. The government of India has brought in new measures to protect women, but that has done nothing to reduce the number of rape and assault cases being reported from across the country.
In 2016, India recorded 106 rapes a day, with a large number of those raped being girls in the age-group of 0 to 12 years. In 2016, the national capital Delhi witnessed the most rape cases at 1,996 , followed by 712 in Mumbai, 354 in Pune and 330 in Jaipur, according to the National Crime Records Bureau data.
