Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sexual abuse against children is rampant in India 
 
 A panel of doctors has accepted a 10-year-old rape victim's plea for an abortion in the northern Indian state of Haryana. 
 
 Dr Ashok Chauhan told the BBC the termination would be carried out "anytime now". 
 
 The girl became pregnant about five months ago. She alleges rape by her stepfather, who has been arrested. 
 
 Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors confirm the woman's life is in danger. 
 
 The decision to allow the child to abort was taken after a local court told doctors at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in the town of Rohtak that it would accept their recommendation. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Campaigners say child safety is of utmost importance 
 
 Analysis: Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi 
 
 India is home to the largest number of sexually abused children globally. But there's a general reluctance to talk about the problem and it's rarely discussed in public. 
 
 Studies have shown that in large numbers of cases, like in the case of the 10-year-old rape victim in Rohtak, the abusers are known to the children and include care-givers like parents, relatives and teachers. 
 
 Contrary to the popular belief that only girls are abused, boys are equally at risk; and children from affluent families are just as much at risk as those from poor backgrounds. 
 
 Campaigners say sexual abuse of children goes unchecked because the victims are often afraid to report it to their parents or teachers, and also because parents themselves often hush it up, fearing family dishonour. 
 
 But in recent years India has been waking up to the problem and on Tuesday, child rights charity World Vision India launched a new campaign to end child sexual abuse by 2021. 
 
 The campaign aims to impact five million children across 200 districts and calls on every Indian citizen to work to break the silence that surrounds child abuse. 
 
 Campaigners say India's culture at present stands on the side of the offender, and that must change. 
 
 The tough law against abortion was introduced to fight India's skewed gender ratio. A deep-seated cultural preference for sons has led to millions of female foetuses being aborted over the years by pregnant women after undergoing foetal gender testing. 
 
 In recent months India's Supreme Court has received several petitions, some from women who were raped, wanting to terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks. The court has always referred the matter to medical experts. 
 
 The scale of abuse in India 
 
 A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours 
 
 More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015 
 
 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18 
 
 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse 
 
 50% of abusers are known to the child or are "persons in trust and care-givers" 
 
 Sources: Indian government, Unicef 
 
 In the latest case in Rohtak town in Haryana, doctors from the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) accepted the family's request to allow the child to have an abortion after discussing the matter on Monday. 
 
 The pregnancy came to light last week when the 10-year-old's mother, who works as a domestic helper, suspected her child was pregnant and took her to see a doctor. 
 
 Reports said the girl was often left at home when her mother went to work. She told her mother that she had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather, who had warned her not to say anything. 
 
 Image copyright Manoj Dhaka Image caption Doctors at the Rohtak hospital told the BBC the termination would be carried out "anytime now" 
 
 The stepfather was arrested after the mother lodged a police complaint, senior Rohtak police official Pankaj Nain told the BBC. 
 
 Dr Chauhan had said on Monday the case for the termination was "borderline". 
 
 "She is around 20 weeks pregnant, but it could be 19 weeks or it could be 21 weeks. The technology is not so advanced that it can tell you exactly what week she's in." ||||| Hundreds of women in Delhi have applied for gun licences following the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman by six men in a bus in the city last month. 
 
 The news underlines the widespread sense of insecurity in the city, deep before the incident and deeper now, and the lack of faith in law enforcement agencies. 
 
 The ashes of the victim of the attack – who died on Friday after 13 days in hospitals in India and Singapore, and was cremated in Delhi in a secret ceremony under heavy security on Sunday – were scattered on the surface of the Ganges river, sacred to Hindus, in northern India on Tuesday. 
 
 The case has provoked an unprecedented debate about endemic sexual harassment and violence in India. Tens of thousands have protested across the country, calling for harsher laws, better policing and a change in culture. 
 
 Politicians, initially caught off-guard, have now promised new legislation to bring in fast-track courts and harsher punishments for sexual assault. The six men accused of the attack are to be formally charged with murder later this week and potentially face execution. 
 
 Indian media are currently reporting incidents of sexual violence that would rarely gain attention previously. In the last 24 hours these have included a teenager fleeing repeated abuse by her brother, who was allegedly assaulted on a bus by a conductor, a 15-year-old held for 15 days by three men in a village in Uttar Pradesh and repeatedly assaulted, an 11-year-old allegedly raped by three teenagers in the north-eastern city of Guwahati and two cases of rape in the city of Amritsar. 
 
 One case reported on Tuesday involved a woman, also in a village in Uttar Pradesh, who suffered 90% burns after being doused in kerosene, allegedly by a man who had been stalking her for months. 
 
 There were signs that a further taboo was about to be broken when one of India's best-known English-language television presenters asked viewers who had experienced abuse from a family member to contact her. 
 
 The rush for firearms will cause concern, however. Police in Delhi have received 274 requests for licences and 1,200 inquiries from women since 18 December, two days after the woman and a male friend were attacked in a bus cruising on busy roads between 9pm and 10pm. 
 
 "Lots of women have been contacting us asking for information about how to obtain licences. Any woman has a threat against her. It's not surprising. There are fearless predators out there," said Abhijeet Singh of the campaign group Guns For India. 
 
 Delhi police received around 500 applications for the whole of 2011, up from 320 the previous year. 
 
 Hundreds of women had come in person to the police licensing department in the city, the Times of India reported. 
 
 "We had to patiently tell them that one needs to have a clear danger to one's life to be given a licence. However some … said that with even public transport no longer safe in the city they just cannot take chances," an unnamed official told the newspaper. 
 
 There are estimated to be 40m guns in India, the second highest number in the world after the US. Licences are hard to obtain and most are illegal weapons, many manufactured in backstreet workshops. Official ownership levels remain low – three guns for every 100 people – but in recent years the number of women holding arms has risen. Most are wealthy and worried about theft or assault. 
 
 There are fears the attack will lead to further restrictions on women in India, who already suffer significant constraints. 
 
 Elders in Matapa, in the poverty-stricken Indian state of Bihar, banned the use of mobile phones for teenage girls and warned them against wearing "sexy" clothes. They claim the move will check rape cases and restore "social order". Other villages nearby are planning similar bans, locals said. 
 
 One member of parliament in Rajasthan, the north-western state, also called for a ban on skirts for schoolgirls to keep them away from "men's lustful gazes". Banwari Lal Singhal said private schools allowing students to wear skirts explained increased sexual harassment locally. 
 
 Matapa is in southern Bihar's Aurangabad district – the region from which one of the Delhi gang-rape accused, Akshay Thakur, comes. The order was issued after a formal meeting with villagers, council officials and school teachers on Sunday. "Almost every villager pressed us to ban the mobile phones use by the schoolgirls saying they are proving quite dangerous for the society and corrupting traditional values," the local village council head, Sushma Singh, told the Guardian on Tuesday. 
 
 Protesters were angered by the news. "Our sister will have died in vain if all that is happening after is our fear is greater and ladies are more unfree," said Deepti Anand, a 21-year-old student in Delhi who has attended demonstrations most days in recent weeks. 
 
 Additional reporting by Manoj Chaurasia
– December's deadly gang-rape in New Delhi put a spotlight on the country's ugly problem of sexual assault. But India faces another terrible sexual abuse failing—this one involving its children. Human Rights Watch today released an 82-page report on the rampant sexual abuse of Indian children, reports al-Jazeera. Though the report relies on in-depth case studies of 100 abuse victims rather than a "quantitative analysis," it does highlight a 2007 survey of 12,500 at-risk children that found a stunning 53.2% of those questioned had faced one or more forms of sexual abuse; 72% of those victims say they told no one. "Shockingly the very institutions that should protect vulnerable children can place them at risk of horrific child sexual abuse," said HRW's South Asia director. India's poorly trained and poorly paid police often refuse to register complaints; children who do report abuse and are seen by a doctor often undergo traumatic exams. Last year India finally passed its first law banning child sex abuse, but that's not enough, says HRW. "The criminal justice system, from the time police receive a complaint until trials are completed, needs urgent reform." See the full report here.