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Pakistan outcry over rape of five-year-old girl

People have rallied across Pakistan, demanding the arrest of men who raped a five-year-old girl in Lahore.

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Pakistani workers from NGOs perform during an anti-rape protest in Lahore. (Getty)

2 min read

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Source: AAP


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Rights campaigners have staged protest rallies across Pakistan over the rape of a five-year-old girl in the eastern city of Lahore.

Police still have no clue who carried out the attack despite detaining several suspects and releasing most of them after questioning.

Police say the child was found outside a Lahore hospital at around on Friday night, a day after she went missing from a poor neighbourhood in the city.

"Her condition is relatively stable but still she is in the intensive care unit," doctor Farzand Ali, medical superintendent at the Services Hospital, told AFP.

Senior police officer Zulfiqar Hameed said investigators have questioned several suspects but had yet to arrest anyone.

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"We are investigating and we hope steady progress (is being made) but no one has yet been identified nor anyone formally arrested," Hameed told AFP.

Doctors earlier said the child was raped several times.

Rights campaigners and workers from NGOs on Saturday and Sunday staged protest rallies across Pakistan and demanded the arrest of the culprits.

Widespread outrage has dominated social media while private TV channels prominently broadcast reports on the girl and her ordeal.

Rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute in Pakistan, where women are often treated as second-class citizens.

In neighbouring India, a judge on Friday sentenced to death four men convicted of the fatal gang rape of a student on a New Delhi bus last December, fulfilling the last wish of the 23-year-old victim who died of her injuries.


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