Two men have been convicted of raping their ten-year-old niece after she fell pregnant and was forced to give birth when an Indian court denied her an abortion.
Judges stopped the young girl terminating the pregnancy at week 32. Her family had only discovered she was pregnant after she complained of a stomach ache.
The young girl, from Chandigarh, Punjab, initially told police and that she had been raped several times by the first uncle, who is in his 40s.
However, police reopened the case after a DNA test showed the first uncle was not the father of her baby.
A DNA test carried out on the young girl’s baby matched a 38-year-old uncle who was arrested in September. He was the second uncle to be held on abuse charges. Pictured above is a protest against rape and sexual violence in India
They launched a further investigation to see whether the girl may have been raped by others.
The second uncle, 38, was then arrested and DNA tests on the baby proved he was the father.
The two men were both declared guilty in court today.
The older uncle’s trial lasted a month, whereas the younger uncle was convicted in just 18 days, the BBC reports.
Sentencing is set for Thursday.
The young girl was denied an abortion by a court in July because her family only discovered that she was pregnant when she was in her third trimester.
The young girl, from Chandigarh, Punjab, was denied an abortion by a court in July, because her family only discovered that she was pregnant when she was in her third trimester
The girl’s baby was delivered by C-section at a hospital in Chandigarh in August and the infant is now in the care of authorities ahead of an adoption.
The chairman of the team that treated the girl, Dr Dasari Harish, said at the time: ‘As far as the girl is concerned, she is stable and will be kept in a separate room.’
He added that the ‘high risk pregnancy’ ultimately concluded in an ‘uneventful’ birth.
‘We hope the baby also recovers,’ he said.
The girl was not aware that she was going to hospital to deliver a baby but was instead told by her parents that she needed an operation to remove a stone from her stomach.
Her father has asked that the child be made available for adoption.
Indian law does not allow women to undergo the procedure beyond 20 weeks unless the foetus is proven to be genetically unviable or if it poses a risk to the mother’s life.