Anger in Delhi after new shocking rapes

A toddler and a five-year-old girl were raped in separate attacks in New Delhi overnight with at least one gang-raped, police said yesterday, as activists warned of an "epidemic" of sexual violence in the capital.

The two-and-a-half-year-old girl was abducted from a religious event in west Delhi by two men on Friday night and raped before being dumped in a park near her home, relatives and police said.

In a separate incident on the other side of the city, the five-year-old was lured to a neighbour's house and raped by three men, a police officer told AFP.

An agitated crowd of more than 100 people gathered near the toddler's home late yesterday afternoon attempting to block traffic and lambasting the police's failure to make arrests in the case, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.

"They (police) are not doing anything to arrest the rapists. We don't feel safe in this city and there will be a day when parents will stop giving birth to girls fearing they will be raped," a female relative of the girl told reporters without giving her name.

Police said they have launched a manhunt on the 2-year-old's case but no arrests have been made so far. Authorities have released CCTV footage of two men riding away on a motorbike with the victim in an attempt to catch the alleged perpetrators.

Separately, police in eastern Delhi arrested three men overnight in the case of the five-year-old victim, whom tests showed was raped multiple times, after locals managed to catch her alleged assailants.

Both girls are undergoing medical treatment but are believed to be out of danger.

The latest attacks come eight days after a four-year-old girl was allegedly raped and slashed with a blade before being abandoned by a railway track in the capital.

"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," Delhi Commission for Women chairwoman Swati Maliwal tweeted.

Maliwal told Indian television station NDTV that violence against women had assumed "epidemic proportions" in Delhi.