NANDED (Maharashtra): A dalit youth had his eyes pierced for eloping with his upper-caste girlfriend whose relatives also beat up the boy and his friend in Sategaon village near here last week.

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 accused of the assault, sources said.

The enraged relatives of the 15-year old girl, Premala Jadhav, who admitted the dalit youth Chandrakant Gaikwad and his friend Milind Jondhale in two hospitals in Nanded in an apparent attempt to keep the crime under wraps, also warned Gaikwad's parents against approaching the police, according to the sources.

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 Jan 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 Mlind as saying.

"We have made the arrests on the basis of the two young men's statement 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.

"The hospital authorities are yet to tell us about the severity of the wounds and whether the two young men stand a chance of regaining their eyesight," he added.

While Chandrakant's parents refrained from registering a complaint for fear of reprisal, the police took the action on their own following a tip-off received by Deputy Superintendent of Police Vasant Jadhav, the sources said.