Eight of the nearly 20 men who allegedly abducted four tribal schoolgirls from their hostel and then gangraped them in Jharkhand’s Pakur district were arrested on Tuesday. The state government promised to take total responsibility for the four girls’ education and train them in self-defence.
Medical tests on the four girls, aged between 12 and 14 years and belonging to the Parhaiya primitive tribe, confirmed that they were raped repeatedly, said officials. The girls were allegedly abducted from their hostel in a residential missionary school at Labda village under Littipara police station by nearly 20 armed men and then gangraped some 500 metres away on Sunday night. Eleven local men were named as accused in an FIR that had 14 others as unnamed accused.
Pakur SP Y.S. Ramesh said raids were on to arrest the absconding accused and that all the suspects seemed to be adults, most likely from nearby villages. “As soon as the police entered the village, three men ran after seeing the police. The police are working at the identification and arrest of all the accused in this incident,” he added. The victims identified two of the arrested men. A.B. Malto, the school’s principal, said the assailants were masked and they locked him in his room as they went misbehaving with the panicked minor schoolgirls.