The Delhi Police had arrested a 25-year-old man accused of kidnapping, raping and torturing a five-year-old girl in the national capital. The accused, reportedly named Manoj Kumar, was arrested from Muzzaffarpur district in Bihar on Friday night.

The five-year-old girl who had been brutally raped and assaulted had been abducted on April 15 and been held hostage for three days without food and water in Kumar's house in East Delhi's Gandhi Nagar. The girl and her father stayed in the smae building where Kumar lived. The girl was rescued when family members heard her screams on Wednesday evening. She is now being treated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and is in a stable condition. But the doctors have said that there is massive infection in her private areas and efforts are on to control it. The doctors have also surgically removed a bottle and candle from inside her.

Delhi's shame

Barely five months after the December 16 gangrape and assault of a paramedical student (who later died of her injuries), the brutal rape of the child has sparked widespread protest in the city. The allegations of the family that the police delayed lodging an FIR and then tried to bribe them to keep shut about the brutality has sparked public anger. The family has alleged that the police investigation of the girl's abduction was shoddy to start with. The police did not visit the girl's home neither did it question the neighbours until after she was found.

The outrage was further fuelled when a girl protesting the rape and police inaction was slapped by Delhi Police assistant commissioner B S Ahlawat. Ahlawat has been suspended.

PM disturbed

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said he was “deeply disturbed" with the brutality committed on the child and asked the society to work to root out the evil.

He also expressed anger over the way protesters were treated by the Delhi Police. On Friday night, the ACP was suspended and two other officials faced similar action on the charge of trying to hush up the case.

Several hundred people gathered outside a municipal hospital in eastern Delhi, where the girl was admitted for treatment on Thursday.