India police arrest teenagers in rape of toddler

Teenage duo accused of raping two-year-old in Delhi in latest incident of sexual violence against a young child.

Two and a half year old girl raped in Indian capital Delhi
The latest sexual assaults against young children have sparked domestic and international outrage [EPA]

Police in Delhi say they have arrested two teenagers for allegedly raping a toddler, in the latest incident of sexual violence against a young child in the Indian capital.

Top police officer Dependra Pathak said police had questioned more than 250 residents of the western Delhi neighbourhood where the two-year-old girl was raped and left bleeding in a park on Friday night.

In a separate incident, police on Saturday arrested three men for raping a five-year-old in an east Delhi suburb.

The rape of the two little girls comes a week after a four-year-old was raped and brutalised in New Delhi.

Outrage

The attacks add to a grim catalogue of sexual assaults in India, many of which have sparked domestic and international outrage.

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The fatal gang rape of a young student on a bus in Delhi in 2012 led to an outpouring of anger over frightening levels of violence against women.

India recorded 36,735 rape cases in 2014, with 2,096 of them in Delhi. Experts say those figures likely underrepresent the true scale of the crimes,

Still, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, executive director of the International Civil Society Action Network, told Al Jazeera that the women’s movement in India has been successful in bringing international attention to the number of sexual assaults in the country.

“I think as much as we might say that the levels of sexual assault have gone up, it may well be that it’s the reporting of these assaults that have increased, and that’s in large part because of the women’s movements in India,” Anderlini said.

“But we also need to recognise when these [assaults] are new forms of violence against women and, specifically, violence against girls and children.”

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies