A teenage rape victim has claimed she was sexually assaulted a second time while in hospital receiving treatment for the original attack in India’s east, police said on Monday, in the latest case of violence against women.
The 15-year-old girl has told police that she was raped on Sunday by a security guard at the hospital where she had been admitted in Jamshedpur city in the impoverished state of Jharkhand.
“We registered a case and arrested the private security guard posted at the hospital after the girl’s complaint and are now awaiting her medical report,” police superintendent Chandan Jha told AFP news agency.
“The girl has (now) been referred to the best hospital in the city for further treatment and rehabilitation,” he added.
The girl had been admitted several days earlier to the M.G.M Hospital after informing police that she had been raped by a teenager in her neighbourhood on the city’s outskirts.
“Since the accused in the earlier case was also a minor, he was detained and sent to a juvenile remand home,” Jha said.
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.
It also led to major reform of India’s rape laws, including speeding-up of trials and increasing penalties for offenders, but high numbers of assaults persist.
India recorded 36,735 rape cases in 2014, with 2,096 of them in Delhi. The city has the highest rape figures in the country and registered 300 rape cases and 500 reports of molestation in the first two months of 2015, according to police figures.
This story was first published in Al Jazeera