Trainee nun gang-raped in Odisha, 2 arrested

A 28-year-old trainee nun was allegedly gang-raped by three youths, including two cousins, after holding her forcibly for about a week in Odisha's Ganjam and Gajapati districts, police sources said on Monday.

The two cousins -- Jatindra Subhasunder and Jogendra Subhasunder -- were arrested, while the third accused was still at large, Kandhamal district Additional Superintendent of Police Gobind Chandra Mallick said.

The victim, who was being trained as a nun at the St Mary Convent in Chennai, received a call from a woman informing her that her mother was in serious condition, police said, quoting the first information report.

After she alighted from the train at the Berhampur railway station in Ganjam district on July 5, she was picked up by the two cousins who lived in her village. The woman, who hailed from Minjapanka in Kandhamal district, had no reason to suspect them and accompanied them to their village under Bramhanigaon police station, the sources said. But she was taken to unidentified places, including Gajapati district, where the two cousins along with a third man allegedly raped her for a week before dropping her back at the railway station in Berhampur on July 11 with a threat not to disclose the incident to anyone, Singh said.

The victim told her mother about her ordeal after reaching home last Saturday, Baliguda Sub-Divisional Police Officer, K V Singh said. The victim's brother was a co-accused in the murder of the father of one of those arrested, Singh said.

Police have registered a case under section 355 (assault to dishonour person), 366 (kidnapping), 343 (wrongful confinement), 376 (rape), 501 (printing defamatory matter) and 120(B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. Mallick said the two accused and the victim were medically examined at the MKCG Medical College Hospital in Berhampur. The woman caller was being traced.