NEW DELHI: A 12-year-old girl, who had been raped, was seen on CCTV footage in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain district going door to door seeking help while bleeding and only partially clothed, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

In the footage, no one comes to her aid as she walks around the area for an hour, while one resident is seen shooing her away.

The video comes a week after India passed a bill that empowers women to claim 33 per cent of seats in parliament and assemblies, but for which they will have to wait for another possible 10 years to be brought to fruition due to the technicalities involved, analysts say.

“The medical examination has confirmed rape. We have formed a special investigation team and are closely following this. We appeal to the people to inform the police if they get any information,” Ujjain SP Sachin Sharma said.

According to police, the girl was not able to properly give them her name or address. They have accessed the CCTV footage and said they were trying to find out how the girl got there and where she was assaulted.

Police have registered a case of rape against unidentified accused. The stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act has also been invoked.

Police are trying to track her family, and have also begun a technical investigation to ascertain the movement of vehicles and track people in the area in an effort to zero-in on the culprits, the report said.

Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath expressed distress at the incident, and asked Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of the Bharatiya Janata Party to sanction Rs1 crore in relief to the victim and strict punishment to the accused.

Mr Nath wrote on social media platform X, “It is heart-wrenching to see a case of extremely cruel abuse of a small girl in Ujjain. The kind of rape that happened to a 12-year-old daughter and the way she ran around in many areas of the city in a semi-nude state and then fell unconscious on the road, puts humanity to shame.”

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2023