Infant girl dies due to asphyxiation, no rape evidence: Autopsy
ISTANBUL
AA file photo
An autopsy has shown that a 3-year-old girl in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa was killed after swallowing a bead and did not suffer sexual abuse, the Şanlıurfa Governor’s Office has said, dismissing rumors on social media that she had been raped and murdered.
“Dilan B. died from swallowing a foreign object according to an autopsy conducted by the Diyarbakır Forensic Medicine Institute,” Anatolian news agency quoted the office as saying.
The statement also said all the claims on websites and social media claiming that the girl had been raped were unfounded.
“No evidence of rape was found in the autopsy, and the little girl had not been sexually abused in any way,” the office said.
Police have reportedly launched an investigation into the incident.
Claims of infant rape rocks Turkish social media
Claims that a 3-year-old girl was raped and killed in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa caused uproar on Twitter today, with many demanding that officials issue a clarification of the incident.
Dilan B. was found unconscious by a family member in front of their home in Şanlıurfa's Siverek district yesterday, news portal Mynet.com reported. Paramedics arriving at the scene saw that the little girl was not breathing and moved to hospitalize her at Siverek State Hospital, but she died on the way there. It was later said a bead had become stuck in her windpipe, choking her to death.
It was later alleged by an anonymous source, however, that doctors observed bleeding in Dilan B.'s vagina during post-mortem examinations and immediately sent her body to a hospital in the nearby province of Diyarbakır for a full autopsy.
The Hürriyet Daily News contacted the Siverek State Hospital for an official explanation but doctors there declined to comment on the allegations.
Rape claims spread like wildfire over social media, with Twitter users demanding a clarification from officials. The hashtag #dilananeoldu ("What happened to Dilan?") was created and rapidly climbed to the number-one trending topic in Turkey, while the socialist RedHack organization brought down the websites of the Siverek and Şanlıurfa state hospitals in what they described as retaliation for the institutions’ continued silence on the issue.
Journalist Ertuğrul Mavioğlu claimed on Twitter that he learned that the emergency respondent at Siverek State Hospital noticed a tear in Dilan B.'s vagina but that the doctor was later "warned" over the phone not to publicize the incident.
