New Delhi:
The five-year-old who was kept captive and raped in a room below where her family lives will spend another two weeks in hospital, doctors have said.
One of the two men arrested from Bihar for her attack has allegedly provided the police with chilling details of how she was assaulted.
The police say that Manoj Kumar, who rented the room where the child was kept prisoner, has revealed that on April 15, he was drinking and watching porn on a mobile phone at the home of his friend Pradeep Kumar, 19, also from Bihar. The two men then travelled to where Manoj had recently rented a room in East Delhi.
They spotted the child playing there and bought a chocolate to lure her into Manoj's room, according to the police. They then took turns raping her. The police say that Manoj asked Pradeep to strangle the girl. Manoj reportedly waited outside while Pradeep went into the room to kill her. When he emerged, Pradeep said the child had died and the two men caught a train to Bihar.
Manoj was arrested three days later. Pradeep was caught yesterday in Bihar and brought to Delhi. He reportedly told the police he had made "a big mistake."
The child lay bleeding and without food or water in the locked room till Wednesday evening, when her mother heard her cries and summoned the police. Her husband claims that the police, who had been reluctant to help him, then offered him a bribe of Rs 2,000 to buy his silence about his daughter's ordeal.
The assault and the police's reaction has driven new street protests in Delhi, a smaller version of the massive demonstrations in December that followed the fatal gang-rape of a medical student on a moving bus.
The outrage pressured the government to introduce tougher new anti-rape laws.