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Two days after Indian police arrested 14 people over the alleged gang-rape and murder of a teenager in the state of Jharkhand, a 17-year-old is reportedly battling for her life after being raped and set ablaze in the same state.
Key points:
- The new victim in Jharkhand was reportedly attacked by a neighbour
- Another case of a gang-rape of a 14-year-old girl took place in neighbouring Odisha state
- Police arrested a total of 22 suspects in three separate teenage rape cases in east India
The crime took place on Friday but the girl's family reported it to the police on Saturday.
The new victim was reportedly alone when she was attacked by a neighbour.
She is being treated in the neighbouring West Bengal state, said Akhilesh Kumar Jha, Deputy Inspector General of police.
"A team of police officers has been constituted and sent to Berhampur in West Bengal where the girl is undergoing treatment at a private hospital for recording her statement," police officer Shrawan Kumar was quoted by local media as saying.
"On the basis of the complaint, the accused has been arrested and sent to jail."
22 arrested in teenage rape cases in east India
In addition to the arrest of the 14 people suspected of kidnapping, raping and burning to death the teenager from Chatra, police have arrested an additional man, part of the group that set fire to the house and members of the village council accused of failing to report the initial rape allegations to police.
Six other suspects were also recently arrested in another seperate case involving a teenage rape in eastern India.
In the neighbouring Odisha state, a 14-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped in the district of Sambalpur.
"The girl [in the district of Sambalpur] was first assaulted by one person and later by four others in different locations," Police Inspector Jay Rashmi Sethi told Reuters.
This brings the total of suspects arrested in the three seperate cases of rape of teenage girls in east India to 22.
Sexual violence reports steadily rising
Reports of sexual assault of children have dominated headlines in recent weeks, leading to an outpouring of anger across the country.
Reports of sexual violence have been steadily rising in India despite the national outrage that followed the fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012.
The incidents come less than a month after India approved the death penalty for the rape of girls younger than 12, and increased the prison term for the rape of older girls and women.
The approval of the death penalty for child rapists came after a particularly gruesome rape and murder of a Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state, who was kidnaped, sedated and gang-raped in a Hindu temple.
Reported rape cases in India have climbed steadily in recent years to around 40,000 in 2016. Many more cases are believed to go unreported.
Child rape accounts for about 40 per cent of the reported cases.
ABC/Reuters
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, crime, sexual-offences, india, asia
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