NEW DELHI: An eight-year-old girl was allegedly raped by two minors in northeast Delhi's Shastri Park area, police said on Tuesday.
A senior police officer said the condition of the survivor is stable and she has been shifted to the general ward of the hospital where she is undergoing treatment.
Earlier in the day, Delhi Commission for Women Chairperson Swati Maliwal had said the victim was battling for life due to critical injuries.
Police said they have nabbed two juveniles, aged 10-12, in connection with the incident.
According to them, the victim was playing outside her house at around 2 pm on Monday when she was lured by one of the boys who lives in the same locality.
He along with his friend then raped the girl.
As she returned home at around 4:30 pm, she narrated her ordeal to her mother who brought her to the police station, a police officer said.
The officer said a case was registered under sections 363 (kidnapping) and 376 AB (sexual assault) of the Indian Penal Code as well as relevant sections of the POCSO Act.
Police said one of accused stays with his relatives as his father is not alive and mother lives in Bihar.
The girl's father is a street vendor.
In a statement issued earlier in the day, Maliwal had said that the girl was "brutally raped" and in "unimaginable pain" as she was battling for her life due to severe damage caused to her private parts.
"The people gang-raping an eight-year-old are not humans! The strongest punishment needs to be given to the guilty," Maliwal had said.
"I have issued a notice to the Delhi Police giving them 48 hours to produce a detailed action taken report in the matter along with complete details of the FIR and accused(s) arrested," she said.
The national capital had reported a brutal incident of gangrape in 2012.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, had been gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before being thrown out on the road.
According to Delhi Police, 1,725 rape cases were reported in Delhi till October 31 last year while 1,699 such cases were registered in 2020.