A 19-year-old tribal girl was allegedly gang-raped by 18 to 20 youths aged between 18 and 22 years near a university campus at Dighi, 8km from Dumka, in Jharkhand, on Wednesday. Dumka SP Mayur Patel said: “Six suspects have been detained.”Police said on Thursday the survivor was returning home on a motorcycle with her boyfriend, not a tribal, from the university campus when they were intercepted by six youths on an abandoned stretch of road around 6:30pm. They allegedly first thrashed the boy for having a relationship with a tribal girl, and asked him to shell out Rs 5,000 as “fine” or hand over his cellphone, police sources said. The group then called some more youths to join them.
Quoting the boyfriend’s statement, the sources said the group forced the couple to strip and then held the boyfriend at knifepoint and made him rape her. They then took turns to rape her in a field. “They then forced her to bathe in a pond to destroy any evidence,” he has reportedly said.
