Bihar: Minor rape victim's death due to alleged delay in treatment sparks anger
The death of a 10-year-old rape victim in the eastern Indian state of Bihar after an alleged delay in medical treatment has sparked outrage in the country.The girl died on Sunday morning at the state government-run Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) in the capital Patna. Her uncle has alleged that the child's condition worsened as she was kept waiting in an ambulance for around four hours on Saturday before being admitted to the hospital.PMCH authorities have denied this, saying that claims of a delay in admission are "baseless".
The girl's death has made national headlines, with opposition leaders accusing the Bihar government - a coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal United (JD(U)) - of gross mismanagement. The government has denied any negligence.The girl is from the Dalit community, which is at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Dalits face widespread mistreatment in India despite laws in place to protect them.Following the outrage, the National Human Rights Commission and National Commission for Women have criticised the incident and asked for the hospital's role to be investigated. Rape victims cannot be named under Indian law.
The girl was raped on 26 May, allegedly by a man who lived near her aunt's house in Muzaffarpur. Police have arrested the man and are investigating the crime.The girl went missing while she was playing outside her house. Her family members later found her lying injured near a road. Police officials have told reporters that she had several knife wounds.She was first taken to a local hospital and then to the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), around 85km (53 miles) from Patna.Kumari Vibha, the superintendent of SKMCH, told BBC Hindi that the child had several injuries, including wounds on her chest and neck, but that her condition had stabilised. She was referred to PMCH as she needed reconstruction surgery on her windpipe, Ms Vibha said.But at PMCH, the child's uncle said, they faced a delay in admission while the child waited in the ambulance."They [the hospital staff] made us run around for four hours from one hospital department to another one," he alleged. She was later admitted to the gynaecology department, he said.The hospital has denied the allegations. IS Thakur, a top hospital official, said that the child's family had initially admitted her to the paediatrics department but that she was sent to the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) department because of her injuries."Since we do not have an ICU in ENT, the child was shifted to the ICU of the gynaecology department," he said, adding that the child was brought in an Advance Life Support ambulance, which is equipped to offer critical care."The allegations of a delay in getting a hospital bed are baseless," Mr Thakur said.
The child's plight began making news after a viral video showed members of the opposition Congress party arguing with hospital staff, demanding that she be admitted.Opposition parties in the state have held several protests since the death.Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the girl's death was "extremely shameful" and demanded that strict action be taken against negligent officers."The rape victim waited for hours outside PMCH to be admitted... what is the use of the big buildings being built in the name of hospitals when there is chaos, corruption, misbehaviour, lack of resources and insensitivity all around?" the state's main opposition party Rashtriya Janata Dal said on X.Leaders of the BJP and JD(U) have denied any negligence. Anamika Singh Patel, a BJP spokesperson, called the girl's death "unfortunate"."But I myself run a hospital and I know that getting a bed in a hospital is a process which takes time. People in our government are working responsibly," she said.The incident has also brought attention to the condition of Bihar's medical infrastructure, months before the state assembly election is due to be held.Last month, a patient at another government hospital in Patna said that a rat bit his toe while he was asleep. Hospital authorities had launched an investigation into the incident.On Tuesday, in a scathing editorial titled Bihar's Shame, the Times of India newspaper highlighted the sorry state of hospitals in the state. It referenced a recent report that found that only half of all ventilators in government hospitals were functional and that capital Patna had just one government doctor for 11,541 people. That ratio is much worse in rural areas.Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Rape victims can challenge CPS if cases dropped under pilot scheme
Victims of rape and serious sexual assault who face their cases being dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service will be given the right to request a review under a government pilot. The six-month scheme, which will launch on Friday in the West Midlands, will give victims the right to ask for their case to be reviewed by a different prosecutor if the CPS indicates it intends to offer no evidence. The reform is backed by the attorney general and solicitor general and forms part of the government's pledge to halve violence against women and girls. Campaigners have long called for the change. Criminal cases can be stopped at any point if a prosecutor decides there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction, but this reform strengthens the right of victims to challenge the decision. Though a right to review already exists, it cannot be exercised when the case has been stopped in court. Under the terms of the pilot, for the first time victims of rape or serious sexual abuse will be offered the right to request a review by a different prosecutor before their case is dropped. If that prosecutor determines there is enough evidence, the case will continue. If the trial is successful in the West Midlands, ministers could extend it across England and Wales. Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott, a justice reform campaigner who won compensation from the CPS after her rape case was dropped amid claims she could have had an episode of 'sexsomnia', said the pilot was 'a hugely important step in the right direction'. 'After my own case was closed due to a controversial 'sexsomnia' defence, I used the victims' right to review – only to be told that, despite the CPS admitting a mistake, it was too late to reopen the case because they'd already offered no evidence in court. That experience was devastating,' she said. 'I've spent nearly three years campaigning behind the scenes for this exact change: for victims to have the opportunity to request a second review before a case is shut down.' She added that, despite its failure in her case, the CPS had shown a willingness to reflect and change and that her 'faith in the agencies that once failed me is slowly being restored'. Ministers hope the change will help build trust in the justice system, which has been eroded by lengthy waiting times. In latest quarterly crime data released by the Ministry of Justice running to December 2024, rape and sexual offences had reached a record high in the crown court's backlog. The number of sexual offences waiting to go to the crown court was 11,981, up by 41% in two years. There were 3,489 adult rape cases waiting to go to trial, an increase of 70% in two years. According to figures published by Rape Crisis, fewer than three in 100 rapes recorded by police in 2024 resulted in someone being charged that same year. Adult rape cases take an average of two years to complete in court, with many taking far longer. The pilot was welcomed by the End Violence Against Women Coalition and Centre for Women's Justice. Helen Newlove, the victims' commissioner for England and Wales, said it was 'a first step toward ending a manifestly unfair practice that denied victims a voice and robbed them of justice'. Lucy Rigby, the solicitor general, said: 'This government is treating violence against women and girls with the seriousness it deserves. Part of that is about empowering victims and improving their experience of the criminal justice system.' Siobhan Blake, CPS lead for rape and chief crown prosecutor of CPS West Midlands, said: 'We know for rape victims, the prospect of their case being stopped can be absolutely devastating. Although they can request a review of our decision-making now, if we have already stopped the case in court, there is nothing that can be done to reactivate the case if that review comes to a different conclusion. In those circumstances we offer an apology, but appreciate that for a victim an apology rarely goes far enough or feels like a just outcome. 'This pilot offers greater reassurance for victims. It means that they will be alerted to the prospect of their case being stopped earlier, so that they can ask for a review by a different prosecutor. If the original decision is reversed, then the case will continue but even if it can't we hope that victims will have more confidence in the process and the earlier scrutiny of our decision-making.'
BBC News
7 hours ago
- BBC News
Assam: 'I was pushed across the border into Bangladesh at gunpoint'
Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India's north-eastern state of Assam, says that she was called to the local police station on 25 May and later taken to a point at the border with neighbouring Bangladesh. From there, she says, she and around 13 other people were forced to cross over to Bangladesh. She says she was not told why. But it was a scenario she had been dreading - Ms Banu says she has lived in Assam all her life but for the past few years, she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an "illegal immigrant" from Bangladesh."They pushed me over at gunpoint. I spent two days without food or water in the middle of a field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches," Ms Banu said, wiping away tears. After those two days in no man's land - between India and Bangladesh - she says she was taken to what appeared to be an old prison on the Bangladeshi two days there, she and a few others - she is not sure if all of them were from the same group sent with her - were escorted by Bangladeshi officials across the border, where Indian officials allegedly met them and sent them not clear why Ms Banu was abruptly sent to Bangladesh and then brought back. But her case is among a spate of recent instances where officials in Assam have rounded up people declared foreigners by tribunals in the past - on suspicion of being "illegal Bangladeshis" - and sent them across the border. The BBC found at least six cases where people said their family members had been picked up, taken to border towns and just "pushed across".Officials from India's Border Security Force, the Assam police and the state government did not respond to questions from the on alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are not new in India - the countries are divided by a 4,096km (2,545 miles) long porous border which can make it relatively easy to cross over, even though many of the sensitive areas are heavily it's still rare, lawyers working on these cases say, for people to be picked up from their homes abruptly and forced into another country without due process. These efforts seem to have intensified over the past few weeks. The Indian government has not officially said how many people were sent across in the latest exercise. But top sources in the Bangladesh administration claim that India "illegally pushed in" more than 1,200 people into the country in May alone, not just from Assam but also other states. Out of this, they said on condition of anonymity, Bangladesh identified 100 people as Indian citizens and sent them a statement, the Border Guard Bangladesh said it had increased patrolling along the border to curb these attempts. India has not commented on these media reports indicate that the recent crackdown includes Rohingya Muslims living in other states too, the situation is particularly tense and complex in Assam, where issues of citizenship and ethnic identity have long dominated politics. The state, which shares a nearly 300km-long border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, has seen waves of migration from the neighbouring country as people moved in search of opportunities or fled religious has sparked the anxieties of Assamese people, many of whom fear this is bringing in demographic change and taking away resources from Bharatiya Janata Party - in power in Assam and nationally - has repeatedly promised to end the problem of illegal immigration, making the state's National Register of Citizens (NRC) a priority in recent register is a list of people who can prove they came to Assam by 24 March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The list went through several iterations, with people whose names were missing given chances to prove their Indian citizenship by showing official documents to quasi-judicial forums called Foreigners a chaotic process, the final draft published in 2019 excluded nearly two million residents of Assam - many of them were put in detention camps while others have appealed in higher courts against their exclusion. Ms Banu said her case is pending in the Supreme Court but that authorities still forced her to BBC heard similar stories from at least six others in Assam - all Muslims - who say their family members were sent to Bangladesh around the same time as Ms Banu, despite having necessary documents and living in India for generations. At least four of them have now come back home, with no answers still about why they were picked up.A third of Assam's 32 million residents are Muslims and many of them are descendants of immigrants who settled there during British Khatun, a 67-year-old from Assam's Barpeta who is still in Bangladesh, says she has temporarily been given shelter by a local family."I have no-one here," she laments. Her family has managed to speak to her but don't know if and when she can return. She lost her case in the foreigners' tribunal and in the state's high court and hadn't appealed in the Supreme after the recent round of action began, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma cited a February Supreme Court direction which ordered the government to start deportation proceedings for people who had been "declared foreigners" but were still held in detention centres."The people who are declared foreigners but haven't even appealed in court, we are pushing them back," Sarma said. He also claimed that people with pending court appeals were not being "troubled".But Abdur Razzaque Bhuyan, a lawyer working on many citizenship cases in Assam, alleged that in many of the recent instances, due process - which would, among other things, require India and Bangladesh to cooperate on the action - was not followed."What is happening is a wilful and deliberate misinterpretation of the court order," he Bhuyan recently filed a petition on behalf of a student organisation seeking the Supreme Court's intervention in stopping what they said was a "forceful and illegal pushback policy" but was asked to first approach the Assam high court. In Morigaon, around 167km from Barpeta, Rita Khatun sat near a table which had a pile of papers on husband Khairul Islam, a 51-year-old school teacher, was in the same group as Ms Banu that was allegedly picked up by authorities.A tribunal had declared him a foreigner in 2016, after which he spent two years in a detention centre before being released. Like Ms Banu, his case is also being heard in the Supreme Court."Every document is proof that my husband is Indian," Ms Khatun said, leafing through what she said was Mr Islam's high school graduation certificate and some land records. "But that wasn't enough to prove his nationality to authorities." She says her husband, his father and grandfather were all born in on 23 May, she says that policemen arrived at their home and took Mr Islam away without any was only a few days later - when a viral video surfaced of a Bangladeshi journalist interviewing Mr Islam in no man's land - that the family learnt where he Ms Banu, Mr Islam has now been sent back to India. While his family confirmed his return, the police told the BBC they had "no information" about his Begum says she is sure her father was declared a foreigner due to a case of mistaken identity - he was also taken on the same night as Mr Islam. "My father's name is Abdul Latif, my grandfather was Abdul Subhan. The notice that came [years ago, from the foreigners' tribunal] said Abdul Latif, son of Shukur Ali. That's not my grandfather, I don't even know him," Ms Begum said, adding that she had all the necessary documents to prove her father's family has now heard that Mr Latif is back in Assam, but he hasn't reached home some of these people are back home now, they fear they might be picked up again abruptly."We are not playthings," Ms Begum said. "These are human beings, you can't toss them around as per your whims."Additional reporting by Aamir Peerzada and Pritam Roy
Daily Mail
8 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Tony Hudgell's mother could be released from prison just SEVEN years after being locked up for sick abuse that saw boy lose both his legs as a toddler
The evil mother who abused little Tony Hudgell so badly that he lost his legs is to be freed early from prison, just seven years after being locked up for carrying out the sick torture. Jody Simpson, 31, was jailed in 2018 for 10 years alongside Tony's birth father Anthony Smith after they were both convicted of child cruelty offences. Tony suffered from broken fingers and toes, torn ligaments and contracted sepsis after his birth parents carried out the depraved abuse when he was just six-weeks-old. They left him to suffer in agonising pain for ten days before taking him to hospital. He was on the verge of death when medics first saw him, and due to the extreme level of abuse he suffered, both of his legs needed to be amputated in 2017. But the Parole Board has agreed to release the monster mother from prison, The Mirror reported, after she had 'engaged with art psychotherapy…and victim awareness work'. Tony's adoptive mother, Paula Hudgell, criticised the decision and warned Simpson 'remains a serious risk to children'. Simpson was released in February 2024 but was recalled to prison in June last year following 'a relationship with a convicted sex offender'. Tory MP Tom Tugendhat has posted his support to Tony 'as he faces the early release of his abuser'. The board had in March rejected an application for the hearing to be held in public. They told the BBC their decisions are 'solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community'. Mrs Hudgell wrote in a post on social media: 'After serving just two years on licence, she will be legally free to live as she chooses. This includes being around children—and even having another child. 'This situation underscores the urgent need for a national child cruelty register—a system to ensure that individuals with a history of harming children are monitored, restricted, and prevented from reoffending. 'Our children deserve protection. A register would not only help safeguard vulnerable young lives, but also bring peace of mind to communities across the country. 'It's time we put children's safety first.' Tony has previously been hailed a hero by Prince William and wife Kate over his extraordinary fundraising walks to help vulnerable children. Mrs Hudgell wrote in a post on social media: 'After serving just two years on licence, she will be legally free to live as she chooses. This includes being around children—and even having another child' Princess Kate Middleton pictured with Tony at the Day Centre at the Westminster Hospital He has won a Pride of Britain award for raising £1.7million for the hospital which started treating him and has also received the British Empire Medal for services to the prevention of child cruelty He has won a Pride of Britain award for raising £1.7million for the hospital which started treating him and has also received the British Empire Medal for services to the prevention of child cruelty. In addition to raising the impressive sum, the youngster also inspired an English law change, known as 'Tony's Law', enacted in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Tony's Law calls for increased prison sentences for those convicted of child cruelty and neglect. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: 'This was a horrific crime that saw Tony Hudgell mercilessly tortured by his birth parents and our thoughts remain with him and his loved ones. 'Now that the independent parole board has directed her release, Jody Simpson will be subject to strict supervision and licence conditions. She faces an immediate return to prison if she breaks the rules.'
