NEW DELHI – Five women working for a charity in remote eastern India were abducted and gang-raped at gunpoint, police said Friday, in the latest sex assault in the South-Asian country.
The women said in their complaint they were performing a play to raise awareness about human trafficking in the largely tribal Khunti district of Jharkhand state on Tuesday when they were abducted.
The assailants shot videos of the attack and threatened the women if they went to the police. The women were engaged in the campaign through nukkad natak (street plays) in the area.
The women worked for the non-governmental organisation Asha Kiran which is supported by a local Christian missionary group and were performing at the R.C. Mission School when the incident happened.
Ranchi Range Deputy Inspector General of Police, A.V. Homkar said that the perpetrators released the women after three hours and a case has been lodged to arrest those involved in this heinous act.
Police said those involved in the latest assault were also involved in the ”pathalgadi” (stone engraving) movement in the area.
Police have also rounded up some supporters of Pathalgadi, an anti-establishment self-rule movement popular in several tribal villages who resent outsiders and do not allow them to enter or settle in their area.
Khunti is also a hotbed of Maoists, armed guerrillas who have been waging a decades-long insurgency mainly for land rights.
India has been in the global spotlight since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a woman on a New Delhi bus sparked angry protests, however, the number of sex attacks has grown since then with some 39,000 rape cases reported nationally in 2016.
Jharkhand has especially been in the spotlight after three teenagers were raped and burnt alive in separate incidents last month.
