India police arrest eight for gang-rape of schoolgirls
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Indian security men take up position in the state of Jharkhand, on April 23, 2009. Indian police arrested eight suspects on Tuesday over the gang-rape of four schoolgirls abducted from their convent boarding house in the country's east, officials said. (AFP/File)
Indian police arrested eight suspects on Tuesday over the gang-rape of four schoolgirls abducted from their convent boarding house in the country's east, officials said.
A group of men armed with knives barged into the hostel Sunday night and kidnapped the girls aged between 12 and 14, before assaulting them in a nearby forest in the tribal state of Jharkhand, a police officer said.
"We have made some arrests and we are interrogating eight persons accused in the case," police superintendent Y. S. Ramesh told AFP.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"These girls are shocked and frightened after the incident," he said, adding that police would press for a speedy trial if the men were charged over the crime.
India faces intense scrutiny over its efforts to curb violence against women following the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi last December which sparked major protests.
The school principal told police that the gang locked him and other teachers inside a room at the school run by a Christian missionary in the state's Pakur district.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The men then entered the dormitory and took away four girls, all belonging to a local tribal community, police said.
Ramesh said medical tests on the girls had confirmed that they were raped.
Mass protests erupted nationwide in December and January following the fatal gang-rape, which brought simmering anger about the treatment of women in India to the surface.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Parliament has passed laws aimed at better protecting women, including doubling the minimum prison sentence for gang-rape to 20 years.
Jharkhand is a densely forested state comprising large numbers of indigenous people.