Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: In a shocking incident, a group of armed men tied a doctor to a tree and took turns to gangrape his wife and 15-year-old daughter in front him in Bihar’s Gaya district, police said on Thursday.

When the doctor was returning home from his private clinic with his wife and daughter on his motorcycle, he was waylaid by the goons near Sondiha village under Konch police station late on Wednesday evening. The family was also robbed of cash, jewellery and other valuables they had at the time before being released.

The perpetrators are believed to be residents of Sondiha and nearby villages. According to the victims, the hooligans had waylaid two other men passing through the stretch and held them captive a few minutes before this incident.

“I urged them (perpetrators) to take away all our valuables and let us go, but still they took turns to do this (rape) with me and my daughter on an open agricultural field beside the road,” said the doctor’s distraught wife to journalists on Thursday.

The goons had warned the doctor not to inform police, but he called police from his mobile phone minutes after his release. Gaya SSP Rajeev Mishra and Sherghati SDPO Manish Kumar reached the spot and made arrangements for an ambulance to send the two gangrape victims to Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College (ANMMCH) in Gaya town, some 40 km away, for treatment.

“We conducted raids at Sondiha and two nearby villages and took 20 suspects into custody. Two of those men were identified by the victims, and they confessed to their involvement in the crime,” said the SSP. Konch police station SHO Rajeev Ranjan was suspended for “dereliction of duty,” he added.

IGP (Patna Zone) Naiyar Hasnain Khan said efforts are on to identify all the accused and arrest the others involved in the crime. Policemen are camping in Sondiha village and raids are being conducted, he added.

“Such incidents portray Bihar in very poor light. These brutalities show that the Nitish Kumar-led government’s tall talk about the rule of law and good governance has had no impact on the ground,” said Opposition Congress leader and MLC Prem Chandra Mishra.

Bihar Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav of RJD attacked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the incident and said: “After joining hands with BJP, the CM has buried law and order in the state”. The ruling JD(U) and BJP, however, said police took prompt action after learning of the ghastly incident and that all the culprits would be punished as per law.