After eight-day struggle, child rape victim dies in Odisha

The girl’s health status had taken a turn for the worse, since Saturday.

A six-year-old girl, who was raped, strangled and left to die on a school campus by her 25-year-old neighbour in Odisha’s Cuttack district on April 21, died on Sunday at the SCB Medical College, where the child was undergoing treatment for the past eight days.

“The alleged rape victim was admitted at the paediatrics intensive care unit here. She suffered a cardiac arrest and was declared dead. Police inquest and postmortem examinations are being arranged,” Dr Shyama Kanungo, superintendent of the Medical College, told The Indian Express.

After initial signs of recovery, the girl’s health had taken a turn for the worse since Saturday, sources in the hospital said. A health bulletin, prepared by SCB authorities, had warned that the patient was “deeply comatose” and that her “brain stem reflex was absent.”

She had no response to pain stimuli, while her pupils were dilated and was not responding to light, the report said. A team of 13 doctors were treating the girl since April 21.