A 10-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by her stepfather may be forced to give birth as a result of India's restrictive abortion law.
The child, from Rohtak, Haryana state, is around five months pregnant and is expected to give birth in another four months.
Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks, unless a woman's life is in danger.
The law was enacted to combat the effects of a cultural preference for sons, which led to millions of female foetuses being aborted over the years.
The girl's stepfather has been arrested and detained pending a full investigation after her mother reported him to police.
The stepfather, who is also her uncle, reportedly raped the girl when her mother left home for work.
After the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) decided the girl's life had not been endangered, a necessary condition under the law for abortions after 20 weeks, the court must decide whether she will be allowed to have an abortion.
"The police and the authorities will now take the report to the court which can order whether the child can undergo an abortion," Dr Ashok Chauhan, medical superintendent at PGIMS, told the BBC.
He described the case for a termination as "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."
It comes after the brutal gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old Indian woman by men who smashed her skull with bricks.
Her body was found in an open field, where it had been partially eaten by stray dogs.
Sexual violence against women is a highly-charged issue in India, where the horrific, fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012 sparked nationwide protests about entrenched violence against women and the failure of authorities to protect them.
Indian media also reported a gang-rape in the city of Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi over the weekend.
On average, 50 crimes against women are registered every day by police in Delhi, including at least four cases of rape, according to a senior official in the federal home ministry.
Additional reporting by Reuters
