The Nanded district police have arrested six of the girl’s 12 relatives allegedly involved in the assault under the Atrocities on Scheduled Castes (Prevention) Act and are on the lookout for others, sources said.

In an apparent attempt to keep the crime under wraps, the  relatives of the 15-year old girl, Premala Jadhav, admitted the Dalit youth Chandrakant Gaikwad and his friend Milind Jondhale in two hospitals in Nanded. They also warned Gaikwad’s parents against approaching the police, sources said.

Chandrakant and Milind told the police that Premala’s relatives caught them in Milind’s house in Khamareddy in Andhra Pradesh, where the three had fled last Saturday, and brought them to Sategaon in a jeep.

The assaulters had gagged Chandrakant and Milind while beating them all through the night of January 5 and piercing their eyes, said the police sources.

“When we fainted from severe thrashing, they sprinkled water on our faces to bring us back to consciousness and beat us up again,” the sources quoted Chandrakant and Milind as saying. “We have made the arrests on the basis of the two young men’s statements and started interrogating the accused in what looks like a clear case of atrocity falling under the ambit of the Act,” Superintendent of Police Ravindra Singhal said.

Singhal said, while it is true that Chandrakant has sustained injuries in both his eyes and Milind in one, the version that their eyes were pierced is not true.