India's Supreme Court has declined the plea which will allow an abortion for a 10-year-old girl, allegedly raped by her uncle, on the grounds that she is too far into her pregnancy.
A panel of doctors told the court that at 32 weeks, termination of the girl's pregnancy would be "too risky".
The pregnancy was later discovered two weeks ago when the girl complained of stomach ache and her parents took her to hospital.
A lower court had earlier turned down the victim's plea on similar grounds
Without disclosing any of the details about the medical report, on Friday, July 28, 2017, the judges ruled that termination was "not good for the girl".
They have asked the government-run Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research Hospital in the northern city of Chandigarh to ensure that proper medical care is provided to the victim.
However, the top court has also suggested that the Indian government set up a permanent medical board in each state to take prompt decisions in such cases.
On Monday, the Supreme Court had ordered doctors to evaluate whether the girl could undergo an abortion safely.
Meanwhile, the court order came after a lawyer, Alakh Alok Srivastava, filed a public interest petition stating that doctors who had already examined the girl found her pelvic bones had not fully developed because of her age and the life of both mother and baby were at a "very serious risk".
"Medical experts have categorically opinioned that if the 10-year-old is forced to give birth, either through normal delivery or even through caesarean-section, it may be fatal to the life of the rape survivor, as well as to her child," the petition said.
The 10-year-old girl belongs to an extremely poor family. Her father is a government employee and mother works as a domestic helper.
The girl was allegedly raped several times in the past seven months by her uncle, who has been arrested. However, her pregnancy was only recently discovered because she herself was unaware of her condition.
The Indian law, on the other hand, does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors confirm the mother's life is in danger.
According to Unicef, children under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 is raped every 13 hours and more than 10,000 children were raped in 2015 in India alone.
About 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18 while 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse and 50% of abusers are known to the child or are "persons in trust and care-givers"
The law against abortion in India was introduced in 1971 to prevent illegal and unsafe abortions and curb maternal mortality. Restrictions remain as an important weapon in India's fight against a skewed gender ratio, which has resulted from a deep-seated cultural preference for sons.
Millions of female fetuses have been aborted over the years by pregnant women after undergoing fetal gender testing.
According to the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi, "In the recent years, Indian courts have received several petitions, many from child rape survivors, seeking to terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks, in most such cases, the pregnancy is not even discovered until after the 20-week period is over because the children are themselves unaware of their condition."
In May, a court in Haryana state asked medical experts to comment on a similar plea and a panel of doctors decided to carry out a termination.
Medical experts say girls can start menstruating and ovulating at nine, but their bodies are not mature enough for pregnancy at that age.
India is home to the largest number of sexually abused children globally, with some campaigners saying that it has reached to an epidemic proportion. However, there is a general reluctance to talk about the problem and it is rarely discussed in public.
