New Delhi: Four students of a Dehradun residential school were taken into custody on Monday for allegedly gangraping their 16-year-old classmate. According to Indian Express, the Uttarakhand police also arrested five members of the administration – the director, the principal, an administrative officer along with his wife and a hostel caretaker – and booked them under various sections of the IPC and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for allegedly destroying evidence.

Media reports, however, have not identified the boarding school in question.

The boys, all 17 years of age, were produced before a juvenile court today.

The incident – which allegedly occurred a month ago on August 14 – came to light after the Dehradun senior superintendent of police Nivedita Kukreti ordered a preliminary probe into the matter on the basis of a tip-off on Sunday, September 17.

According to Times of India, the victim recently confided about the incident to her sister who studies in the same school and informed her about the pregnancy, following which the school authorities tried to keep the matter under wraps.

A team of Uttarakhand State Commission for Protection of Child Rights – led by chairperson Usha Negi – visited the school on Sunday to meet the girl. Thereafter they filed a complaint at the Sahaspur police station.

According to the Indian Express report, on Monday, an FIR was registered against nine persons under sections 376 D (gangrape), 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the IPC and the POCSO Act, a police official.

Police sources reportedly said that when the girl informed the school administration of the gangrape and the fact that she was pregnant, instead of “informing the police and the family of the girl,” they gave her “medications to end the pregnancy,” according to Indian Express.

“The school officials later took the girl to a nursing home for an abortion,” the official said, adding that the administration had put “immense pressure on the girl” to not tell anyone about the gangrape and the pregnancy.

According to station house officer Naresh Rathod, a probe into the matter has revealed that the arrested school officials were aware of the entire incident and that more details would be known only after the police receive the girl’s medical examination report, Hindustan Times reported.