India News: The plight of a five-year-old girl who was brutally raped and tortured in east Delhi and could be rescued only three days later, as reported in TOI, because of police callousness and insensitivity, led to widespread public outrage on Friday. The child is now battling for her life at AIIMS where she was shifted from Swami Dayanand Hospital in Dilshad Garden when public anger boiled over leading to heckling of Delhi health minister A K Walia and the slapping of a 17-year-old girl protester by a senior cop. A string of protests has been scheduled for Saturday.

Reading the mood early, a government that had faced a lot of flak over the Nirbhaya incident barely four months ago, moved into damage control mode with a string of high-level meetings, culminating in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing deep regret over the incident. Within hours, the SHO of Gandhi Nagar police station, the first investigating officer of the case and the ACP who had slapped the girl had been suspended.