A 10-year-old Indian girl who fell pregnant after allegedly being raped by a relative has given birth to a baby girl.
As the BBC reports, the baby was delivered via Caesarean section in Chandigarh.
The infant, born prematurely, has been placed in neonatal ICU in hospital. The 10-year-old is also expected to remain in hospital for around 10 days.
“Both the girl and her baby are doing fine,” doctor Dasari Harish, told AFP.
An official explained the child will be looked after by a welfare committee and then put up for adoption.
India’s Supreme Court rejected a petition to allow the young girl to have an abortion in July. A panel of doctors had declared that terminating the fetus would be “too risky” for the girl, who was 32 weeks pregnant at the time.
The 10-year-old was allegedly raped—repeatedly—by a relative who is currently waiting for a trial.
In India, abortions are not permitted beyond 20 weeks under the 1971 Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, although extreme allowances are made, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
In a BBC investigation, reporter Geeta Pandey, learned that the young girl had not been told about her pregnancy.
The little girl had been informed that her pregnant belly was actually due to a big stone in her stomach.
“She’s very innocent and has no idea what’s happened to her,” a person close to the 10-year-old explained.
A senior police official said while the girl might not understand her pregnancy “I think she has some idea now”.
Mahavir Singh, of the Chandigarh State Legal Services Authority, told the BBC: “We have seen lots of cases of teenage pregnancies involving 14 to 15-year-olds, but this is the first ever case that I have seen of a 10-year-old.”
The news comes amidst public outcry in India about the government’s poor response to rape and violence against women.
