Teenage Boy Rapes 8-Year-Old Girl, Victim Dies In Hospital

An eight-year-old girl died after she was raped by a 19-year-old boy in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The incident took place amid the ongoing lockdown in India over the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

Local police arrested the boy on Sunday for allegedly raping and murdering the girl in Noida’s Salarpur. The minor was admitted to the Child PGI Hospital for treatment where she succumbed to her injuries.

Authorities said that the victim and the youth were related to each other. The girl was the daughter of the accused's maternal uncle and they lived in the same neighborhood. An investigation currently underway into the incident.

The accused youth has been booked under sections 302 (punishment for murder) and 371 (1) (punishment for rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 5 and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act 2012.

Last month, the hanging of four men who carried out the 2012 gang-rape and murder of the 23-year-old paramedic student, who later came to be identified as “Nirbhaya” (meaning fearless), marked the end of a drawn-out and painful saga that exposed the country’s appalling record on sexual violence against women.

According to statistics, a woman is raped in India every 20 minutes. India was also declared the most dangerous country in the world for women, according to a 2018 survey by the Thompson Reuters Foundation. India also has a low conviction rate in rape cases, one of the lowest in the world.