The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a Public Interest Litigation in connection with the rape of an eight-month-old baby in Delhi on Sunday. The plea seeks directions to authorities to have the baby moved to a better hospital and ensure compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family, Deccan Chronicle reported. Her 28-year-old cousin was charged with raping her.
The Supreme Court bench set up a team of two doctors from the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences in Delhi to visit the eight-month-old and assess whether she can be taken to AIIMS from Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital. The doctors have to submit the report by Thursday.
The baby’s parents had asked her aunt – the mother’s sister who lives in the same building in Northwest Delhi’s Netaji Subhash Place – to babysit her and her 2-year-old sister as they had to work on Sunday morning. The accused was also home at the time. When the mother, who is a domestic worker, returned in the afternoon, she found the child bleeding between her legs. Her father told reporters later that her bed was soaked in blood, NDTV reported.
The cousin could not give a clear answer when questioned about the blood. The Delhi Police arrested the man, who works as a labourer, after he admitted that he had molested the baby.
The eight-month-old had to undergo a three-hour surgery in a hospital in North Delhi for her injuries. She has been in the Intensive Care Unit since then, but doctors said her condition is stable.
The police charged the accused under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.
The petition filed in the Supreme Court also seeks directions to the government to frame appropriate guidelines on investigating and trying cases involving rape of children up to 12 years of age under the POCSO Act. It says these guidelines should stipulate that such cases should be completed within six months of an FIR being registered.
“As of now, the POCSO Act provides a maximum punishment of life imprisonment,” said advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, the petitioner in the case. “So I have said that rape cases in which the victim is up to 12 years of age, the maximum punishment should be death penalty.”
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