Crowd protests over lack of arrests in case of two-year-old who was abducted from a religious event and later dumped in a park

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Girls aged two and five have been raped in separate attacks in Delhi, sparking angry protests in the Indian capital over police inaction.

The two-year-old was abducted from a religious event in west Delhi by two men on Friday night and raped before being dumped in a park near her home, police and relatives said.



In a separate incident on the other side of the city, the five-year-old was lured to a neighbour’s house and raped by three men, a police officer said

A crowd of more than 100 people gathered near the two-year-old’s home on Saturday afternoon to protest against the police’s failure to make arrests in the case.

One female relative of the girl said: “[Police] are not doing anything to arrest the rapists. We don’t feel safe in this city.”

Delhi has been grappling with a spate of sexual assaults against women – and in several recent cases, children – which have sparked outrage both in India and abroad.

Pushpendra Kumar, the police chief for west Delhi, said a manhunt for the two men suspected of raping the two-year-old had begun, but no arrests had yet been made.

The toddler was bleeding profusely when she was found several hours after being abducted. Authorities have released video of two men riding away on a motorbike with the victim.

Separately, police in eastern Delhi arrested three men overnight in the case of the five-year-old, who tests showed was raped multiple times. Both girls were undergoing medical treatment.

This month a four-year-old girl was allegedly raped and slashed with a knife before being abandoned by a railway track in Delhi. Police arrested a 25-year-old man in that attack.

On Saturday the Delhi Commission for Women chair, Swati Maliwal, said violence against women had assumed “epidemic proportions” in the city.

Swati Maliwal (@SwatiJaiHind) When will Delhi wake up? Till when will girls continue to be brutalized in Indian capital. Gangrape of 2.5 year n 5 year old. Shameful.

Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said the attacks were “shameful and worrying”, and criticised the prime minister Narendra Modi’s government and his lieutenant governor over the security situation.

Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) Repeated rape of minors is shameful and worrying. Delhi police has completely failed to provide safety. What are PM n his LG doing?

Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) PM Modi shud either himslf act or give control over Delhi police n public order to elected govt of delhi या खुद करो या दूसरों को करने दो

Kejriwal and Modi’s administration are jostling for control of the capital’s police department, while Delhi city authorities say they are unable to improve security for women. They blame Modi’s government, which controls Delhi’s 84,000 police officers – the world’s largest metropolitan force.

Ranjana Kumari, head of the Delhi-based Centre for Social Research, said the turf war between the two governments was making the city less safe for women. “Most of these incidents have been reported in lower-income areas like slums and densely populated areas, where mostly migrants stay,” she said. “These men live in crammed spaces with no social or parental control and usually no fear of law.”

The fatal gang-rape of a young student on a bus in Delhi in 2012 led to an outpouring of anger over levels of violence against women. India recorded 36,735 rape cases in 2014, almost 3,000 of which were in Delhi. The true scale of the problem is likely to be far worse.