Hunt for suspects after gang rape in India government office

PATNA, India - Police have arrested one of five suspects accused of gang-raping a teenage girl inside a local government office in eastern India, an officer said Tuesday.

The 16-year-old victim was attacked after arriving in eastern Bihar state late Sunday where the gang, including a local administrator's driver, approached her and offered her a lift to a relative's home.

Instead they took her to a nearby local government office in Muzaffarpur district and raped her. The victim, who hails from the eastern state of West Bengal, later escaped and filed a police complaint on Monday.

"Five men, mostly youths, forcibly dragged her to a nearby building of the (district) collectorate and gang-raped her till early Monday," Naseem Ahmad, a senior district police officer, told AFP.

Police chief Ranjit Kumar Mishra said that they had "arrested one accused so far and ... are working to arrest the other four".

The case is the latest in a string of violent sex attacks against women in the world's second most populous country. In another case in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state, one of two police officers accused of raping a teenage girl was reportedly arrested on Tuesday.

The December 31 incident took place in Badaun district when the two policemen picked up the 14-year-old as she stepped out to relieve herself.

Badaun was thrown into the spotlight last May when two teenage girls, who were initially thought to have been gang-raped, were found hanging from a tree.

The incident sparked uproar in India, echoing the outrage over the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012.