Outcry in India after eight-month-old baby girl 'is raped by her cousin’

An eight-month-old baby girl has been raped in the Indian capital of Delhi, allegedly by her cousin.

The baby is said to be in a critical condition at a local hospital she was brought to on Sunday.

The suspect in the crime, the infant’s 28-year-old cousin, has been arrested by police.

Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal visited the little girl in hospital on Monday evening and described her injuries as “horrific”.

Ms Maliwal tweeted that the girl was set to undergo three-hour operation.

She wrote: “Her heart-rending cries could be heard in the intensive-care unit of the hospital. She has horrific injuries in her internal organs.”

She later added: “What to do? How can Delhi sleep today when 8 month baby has been brutally raped in capital?

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“Have we become so insensitive or we have simply accepted this as our fate?”

Ms Maliwal called for “stricter laws and more police resources” to protect girls in India in a direct appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The spotlight on sexual violence in India fell after a 23-year-old woman was gang-raped and murdered while she was on a bus to Delhi in 2012.

However, since 2012 the number of reported rapes in Delhi has increased to six a day, and there were an estimated 34,000 last year alone.

Delhi has also become known as India’s ‘rape capital’, after a poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found it to be the world’s worst mega-city for sex crimes against women.

In the Indian city of Visakhapatnam, instead of helping a woman who was allegedly being raped in broad daylight, onlookers decided to film it, in October last year.

While in December 2017, a six-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in the northern state of Haryanahas.