Delhi rape: Girls aged 2 and 5 kidnapped and gang-raped on the same day

A two-and-a-half year-old and a five-year-old have been gang-raped in Delhi, in separate incidents on Friday evening according to media reports. The youngest victim was raped by two men who abducted her on a motorbike from outside her house in the west Delhi Nangloi area at around 11pm.

Neighbours found her lying unconscious at a nearby park bleeding profusely. According to reports on Indian news channel NDTV, the child was kidnapped while she was watching TV. The mother told NDTV: "My girl was watching Ramleela when there was a power cut. That is when they kidnapped her."

In the other incident, a five-year-old girl was gang-raped by three men in Anand Vihar area after being taken from her home. A neighbour abducted the girl and took her to his house and allegedly raped her along with his friends.

Police have arrested three suspects in the case. "Her clothes were partially torn with blood spots all over them. Some locals saw her and she told them she was sexually assaulted," an officer from Anand Vihar police station said. "Some of the locals then barged into the house and caught them (the alleged perpetrators) before handing them over to us."

Both girls sustained serious injuries as a result of the attack with the five-year-old girl suffering bite marks to her body, said Swati Maliwal, the chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women. Maliwal tweeted her dismay of another gang rape incident in India's capital.

She said: "When will Delhi wake up? Till when will girls continue to be brutalized in the Indian capital. Gangrape of 2.5 year n 5 year old. Shameful."

When will Delhi wake up? Till when will girls continue to be brutalized in Indian capital. Gangrape of 2.5 year n 5 year old. Shameful.

— Swati Maliwal (@SwatiJaiHind) October 17, 2015

The two attacks come as Delhi grapples with a series of sexual attacks against women, including several recent cases against children, that have sparked outrage in India and around the world.

Two weeks ago, a four-year-old girl was allegedly raped and cut with a blade before being dumped next to a railway track in Delhi. Police arrested a 25-year-old man in that attack, in which the young girl suffered severe internal injuries, according to the Hindu Times.

India recorded 36,735 rape cases in 2014, with 2,096 of them in Delhi. Some experts believe that those figures do not fully represent the scale of the problem.