Fourth arrest in double gang-rape case in India
Police say they arrested a fourth man Saturday in a brutal gang-rape case that has gripped India and appalled the international community.
All four alleged perpetrators in custody appeared in court Sunday, where a magistrate ordered them held for at least three more days. It's not clear if the alleged perpetrators from the 2013 attack are among the those arrested.
Three of the five suspects were arrested on Tuesday and the fifth suspect is still at large, Rakesh Arya, senior superintendent of police, told CNN.
The woman, a Dalit, the lowest caste in Indian society, was returning home from college on July 13 when the five men allegedly snatched her, said Pushpa Khatri, deputy superintendent of Rohtak police.
According to a cousin, she excels in math and is studying to become a government worker with hopes of one day advocating for women's rights.
A passer-by found the Indian student unconscious in the bushes of a park outside Rohtak and took her to a hospital. The 21-year-old later told police that she was not only drugged and gang-raped, but that two of her attackers drugged and raped her three years earlier.
"They were in the car. I saw them and got scared. They forced me into the car and then they strangled me," the woman told CNN affiliate News 18 of the attack in the northern state of Haryana.
The woman remains at Rohtak medical institute.
CNN is not identifying her cousin because Indian law prohibits the disclosure of information that would identify a rape victim. CNN also has its own policy against identifying rape victims.
Arrests
Per Indian law, police generally have 24 hours from the time of the arrest to finish their investigation, but authorities have said they will petition the court to hold the men longer as they finish their probe.
Courts typically grant the police 15 days in these situations, but depending on the crime, the extension could be as long as 90 days.
Police have formed teams to arrest the accused, who come from different parts of the state of Haryana. They've also sent teams to Bhiwani, the Haryana city where the alleged 2013 rape occurred, police said.
One of the suspects has given police closed-circuit TV footage showing he was not in Rohtak at the time of last week's alleged rape, police told News 18. Another suspect provided call records indicating he was in Ambala, roughly a three-hour drive from Rohtak. Police told the station they are working to verify the alibis.
The woman's family is alleging that the perpetrators, who they say come from a higher caste, have offered a large sum of money to withdraw the allegations, but the family refused.
Previous attack
The second-year college student says the crime she experienced last week was similar to an attack she suffered in 2013, and that two of the men involved last week raped her in 2013, according to Khatri, the deputy police superintendent.
Over the span of four days in October 2013, she was raped twice in Bhiwani, an hour west of Rohtak, she alleged. Police records classify those as different incidents, Khatri said.
The attackers were arrested in November 2013 and jailed, but the woman's family members told police they were forced to move to Rohtak after receiving threats from the suspects and their friends, pressuring them to withdraw the case.
At the time of their arrests, the men told police that they had not known each other until they met in jail.
The two men were released on bail last month.
Asked why the men were granted bail, a spokesman for Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the government cannot interfere or comment on such matters.
"That's the prerogative of the court," spokesman Amit Arya said. "Every citizen has the right to bail. It is part of the judicial process. But rest assured we are taking this very, very seriously."
As for the family's allegation of threats by the attackers, Arya said the government
