The women, including some minors, were all rag pickers and had gone to sell scrap to a dealer, who is reported to be a Ranvir Sena member.

Five Dalit women were raped at gunpoint by three men at Kurmuri village of Tarari block in the district on Wednesday night. All the accused have been arrested.

The police told The Hindu that the women from the neighbouring Dumaria had visited a scrap shop for sales at Kurmuri. The first information report filed by one of the victims said they were held back at the shop owned by Nilnidhi Singh, one of the accused, on one pretext or the other.

“When darkness descended, he and two others on a drinking binge raped us at gunpoint,” it said.

Later, one of the women escaped and reached Dumari. The people of the village came to the Sikarhatta police station on Thursday and lodged the FIR. Initially, the police were reluctant to file the FIR, but when the people protested, the officials relented.

“We arrested all those accused named in the FIR,” Superintendent of Police, Bhojpur, Rajesh Kumar, said.

Jai Prakash Singh was arrested on Thursday night. Nilnidhi Singh and Jaggu Pandit were arrested on Friday afternoon. They were lodged at the police station.

The victims were sent to the district hospital for medical examination.

“The medical report confirms that they have been raped,” said Dhirendra Pandey, a police official associated with the investigation.

Palpable tension



Tension is palpable at Dumaria. District Magistrate Pankaj Paul, Mr. Rajesh Kumar and top police officials visited Kurmuri. After the arrest of the accused, the situation had become normal, the police officials said.

A pall of gloom descended on the village, but the people are unwilling to speak about the incident in the presence of heavy police deployment.

The upper castes are in a majority in the village. Bhojpur district had been infamous for caste massacres in the 1980s and early 1990s as several people were killed in the bloody war between the banned upper-caste private army Ranvir Sena and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) cadres.

Nilnidhi Singh too is said to be the area commander of the Ranvir Sena.

The Bihar government asked the officials to take tough action against the accused. The State Women’s Commission sought a report from the government on the incident.

Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi condemned the incident.