Two arrested for raping sisters in Rajasthan

Two people have been arrested in Rajasthan's Barmer district for allegedly raping two sisters when they were returning home last week, police said Saturday.

"We have arrested two accused, Birda Ram Thursday and Chatura Ram Friday, in connection with the alleged rape. We are currently probing involvement of a third person in the incident," Barmer's Superintendent of Police Hemant Sharma told IANS.

He said a medical examinations of the two sisters had also been conducted.

Though police officials were tight-lipped over the medical report, but sources said that medical examination confirms a rape as there were bite marks on their bodies and some injuries to their private parts.

According to police, the incident occurred at around 9.30 p.m. Aug 16 when these girls were returning home from a bus stop, around 14 km from their village Dhiraniyon Ki Dhani, after filing a complaint against their uncle who, according to them, was harassing them for around a year.

The girls alleged three people raped them on a sand dune near their Jat-dominated, thinly populated village.

"Initially on Aug 17, they (the sisters), in a handwritten complaint, had accused these men of attempt to rape. But later when they met me on Aug 20, they told me that they were raped so we added relevant sections to their report and arrested these persons on rape charges," Sharma said.

He denied allegations that the accused were related to these girls."Though the matter is still under investigation but these accused does not seem to be related to these girls and it does not seem to be an act that has been done in any planned way or pre-set motive," Sharma said.

No one from the village was ready to speak on the matter. However, some on the condition of not to be named said that it can be case of revenge or vendetta as the girls' two elder siblings were sent to jail on charges of murdering their cousin (uncle's son) almost a year back and their family was asked to leave the village by a a caste panchayat.

"But they refused to do so and so they might have been punished in this way," a local resident said.