Union Home Ministry on Friday sought report from Delhi police in the issue of brutal rape of a five-year-old girl in east Delhi as the girl has been sent to AIIMS for better treatment.

A five-year-old who was kept hostage, mutilated and raped by her neighbour, is fighting for her life at Delhi’s famous AIIMS hospital.

Assistant commissioner of police, who slapped a young girl protesting against the rape, was immediately suspended.

She was kidnapped on Monday while she was playing outside her home, and was then kept captive in the basement of the same building where she lived by a man who rented a room there about a week ago.

On Wednesday evening, it was not the police but neighbours who found her after they heard her cries.

Her father said the police offered him Rs. 2000 “to keep quiet”.

Offering a weak defense, the police said that it searched public parks in the neighbourhood, but did not think to search the many rooms in the building where the family lived.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that he was “deeply disturbed” by the “shameful incident”.