In a shocking incident, nine schoolboys were arrested on Saturday on the charges of raping a tenth class girl. The police at Bisra near the steel township of Rourkela in Odisha’s tribal-dominated Sundergarh district said, “all the accused and the victim are minors.”
Three of the accused are classmates of the girl belonging to the same government-run high school. The six other arrested boys were from another school.
The incident occurred on Friday afternoon when the girl was going to a relative’s place in a nearby village along with three of her friends. On the way the girls were stopped by the nine boys who started misbehaving with them.
Three girls managed to flee from the spot while the boys forcibly took the fourth one to a nearby forest area where she was raped.
The police arrested the boys after the girl’s family filed a complaint. The police have also recorded the statements of the victim’s three friends.