Aug 2017
Girl (10) has uncle's child after abortion was refused
A 10-year-old rape victim whose plea for an abortion was rejected by India's Supreme Court has given birth to a baby girl in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, a doctor said yesterday.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was allegedly raped repeatedly by her uncle for several months. The crime came to light when the victim was taken to hospital complaining of stomach pains last month where she was found to be more than 30 weeks pregnant.
On July 28, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea to terminate the 32-week-old pregnancy after taking note of a medical report that abortion was neither good for the girl nor for the foetus.
Last month, her parents asked the country's top court to allow her to have a late-term abortion but the request was turned down. Indian law does not allow medical terminations after 20 weeks unless there is a threat to either the life of the mother or her child.
"She gave birth through C-section today. Both the girl and her baby are doing fine," doctor Dasari Harish told AFP.
"The surgery was uneventful. There were no complications whatsoever. The baby weighed 2.2kg and is in the neonatal ICU for now."
Surgery
The Press Trust of India news agency said the girl was unaware she had delivered a child and the parents had decided to put the baby up for adoption.
Her parents have told her that she had a stone in her stomach and had undergone surgery to remove it, PTI said.
India has a grim record of sexual assaults on minors with 20,000 cases of rape or sexual assaults reported in 2015, according to government data.
Separately, rights groups condemned India's plan to deport 40,000 Rohingya Muslims, saying India should abide by its legal obligations and protect the stateless refugees who face persecution in Myanmar.
Junior Interior Minister Kiren Rijiju told parliament last week the central government had directed state authorities to identify and deport all illegal immigrants including Rohingya, even those registered with the UN refugee agency.
"Indian authorities are well aware of the human rights violations Rohingya Muslims have had to face in Myanmar and it would be outrageous to abandon them to their fates," said Raghu Menon of Amnesty International India.
The Rohingya are generally vilified in India, and there has been a series of anti-Rohingya protests in the past few months.
(Published by the Irish Independent on the 18th August 2017)
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