Wednesday, May 1, 2013

A week after the news of a child rape sparked protests in India, hospital officials confirmed the rape of another girl

The 4-year-old died from cardiac arrest at Care Hospital in Nagpur, India, a spokesman said. A 35-year-old man has been arrested and accused of sexually assaulting the girl, said Mithilesh Shukla, superintendent of police. It is the latest in a number of assaults that caused outrage and raised questions about how women and girls are treated in India. The girl was abducted from Ghansaur, a small town in central India, on April 17, 2013 and her family found her the next day, unconscious and with severe head injuries, Shukla said. She was airlifted to the hospital in Nagpur and put on a ventilator but did not survive. "The doctors tried very hard but were not successful," hospital spokesman P.S. Shriram said. Police say that the rape suspect, Firoz Khan, has confessed to the assault. Recently, two arrests were made in the case of another victim, a 5-year-old girl who was raped in New Delhi. The assaults on the girls came just four months after a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was gang-raped in a bus in New Delhi, setting off furious protests in India. She later died at a Singapore hospital. After the attacks, the country's news media turned their attention to some of the thousands of rape cases reported in the nation each year. In a recent report, the Asian Center for Human Rights cited statistics that showed 48,338 child rape cases were reported in India between 2001 and 2011. The report said that the number of cases rose from 2,113 in 2001 to 7,112 in 2011.

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