3 persons arrested in Bettiah gangrape case: Police

Three accused, named by an 18-year-old former inmate of a Muzaffarpur shelter home who has alleged that she was gang-raped inside a moving vehicle, has been arrested, police said on Tuesday.

Another man has been detained in this connection, they said.

The woman was allegedly raped by four persons in a moving vehicle in Bettiah town on Friday evening.

The 18-year old had on Saturday lodged an FIR with Bettiah women's police station against the four persons.

"The three accused persons arrested in the case are- Saajan, Kundan and Akash while another person has been detained for interrogation in the case," Bettiah town police station SHO Shashi Bhushan Thakur told PTI over the phone.

The fourth accused, Dina Nath, will also be arrested very soon as three police teams have been conducting raids to nab him, Thakur said.

All the accused would be produced before a court after their interrogation, police said.

The police had constituted a special team to carry out raids to ensure that the accused were arrested soon as pressure was mounting on them after National Commission for Women, which took suo motu cognizance of the alleged incident, issued a notice to the Director-General of Police asking him to treat the case on a priority.

"The Commission had taken suo-motu cognizance of this matter and formed an enquiry committee to investigate the case. The Commission has issued a notice to DGP Bihar and asked him to treat this case on a priority and hold speedy investigation followed by the arrest of all accused," the commission had said in a press note on Monday.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also issued notices to the chief secretary and the DGP, seeking a detailed report in four weeks, along with the status of the FIR registered by the police.

Meanwhile, the report of the medical examination, which was conducted by a medical board on Sunday, showed "no external or internal injury" to the victim, District Superintendent of Police Jayant Kant had said on Monday.

Injuries invariably found on the person of a victim of coerced sexual intercourse were absent in the medical tests reports of the complainant, the SP had said.

"We are not ruling out anything at this point of time, though. The girl has named all the accused in her FIR who was, admittedly, known to her since before. We are on the lookout for the accused persons as we need to examine as to whether any type of deception was involved," the SP had told PTI over the phone.

Asked about an audio clip that has surfaced in social media with the claim that it has voices of the four accused, besides the person driving the vehicle, while the girl was sexually assaulted close to her house, the SP said it sheds no fresh light on the case.

"The identities of the accused are not a secret. All of them have been named by her. We are concentrating on tracing and catching hold of them and to subject them to a thorough investigation", he said.

The complainant was lodged at the state-funded shelter home at Muzaffarpur which found itself in the eye of a storm after report of a social audit conducted by Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences flagged sexual abuse of the minor inmates.

After the shelter home was shut down in May, the woman, then a minor, was put up at a government-aided facility in Mokama, falling under Patna district.

She was reunited with her family in Bettiah in July last year and was recently married, residents of the locality where she lives, say.

Over 30 girls were allegedly raped at the Muzaffarpur shelter home run by Brajesh Thakur, the chief of a state-funded NGO.