Two minors have been allegedly raped by a gang in New Delhi, India under worrisome circumstances capable of denting the image of the highly populous nation.
A 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.
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.
The two attacks come as New Delhi grapples with a grim litany of sexual attacks against women and in several recent cases, children that have sparked outrage in India and abroad.
"We have launched a manhunt for the suspects. So far no one has been arrested," Pushpendra Kumar, West Delhi police chief, told AFP of the younger girl's case.
"Two men were involved in the abduction of the girl and the tests have confirmed rape," Kumar said, adding that further examinations would show whether both men raped the toddler.
He said they found the younger child bleeding profusely several hours after she went missing. Police have released CCTV footage of two men riding away on a motorbike with the victim in an attempt to catch the alleged perpetrators.
Police 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 and hand them over to the authorities.
"Her clothes were partially torn with blood spots all over them. Some locals saw her and she told them she was sexually assaulted," an officer from Anand Vihar police station in eastern Delhi told AFP on condition of anonymity.