Patna: Police on Saturday arrested six youths for the gang-rape of a 17-year-old girl from Muzaffarpur at a private lodge in Patna on May 29.

The girl, a Class XII student, told the police that she had come to Patna from the north Bihar town on May 29 to meet Lakhisarai resident Ritesh Kumar. Taken to a private lodge in Sandalpur under Bahadupur police station in Patna City, the girl said she was gangraped late in the night.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Manu Maharaaj on Saturday said representatives of a social organisation for women lodged a complaint on May 30. Ritesh was arrested from Lakhisarai, while the other five persons - who lived in the lodge - were arrested from Patna.

Maharaaj said owner of the private lodge, Mahavir Singh, alias Boku, a resident of Sandalpur, has also been arrested. According to the police complaint, the girl came in contact with Ritesh on a social networking site recently. Last Tuesday she came to Patna from Muzaffarpur on Ritesh's request. Ritesh, who was preparing for he engineering entrance examination in Bokaro, Jharkhand, too came to Patna.

"We met at Patna Junction from where we went to different places in the city. In the evening, Ritesh requested me to visit his friend's lodge in Sandalpur on the pretext of his birthday. We stayed in a separate room and Ritesh raped me there at night. Around 11pm, the other youths entered the room and raped me," the girl told the police. The accused also made a video clip to blackmail her, she said.

The girl's statement was recorded before a judicial magistrate on Saturday after which she has been sent to hospital for medical examination. The offenders would be produced in court after interrogation, SSP Maharaaj said.

Police said the lodge owner asked Ritesh and the girl to leave the lodge in the morning. The girl left for her home in Muzaffarpur, while Ritesh went to Lakhisarai. But members of the social organisation got a whiff of the incident and traced the girl.

An investigating officer said the girl was so depressed that she had decided to commit suicide. "It was because of the intervention of the social organisation representatives that she agreed to fight for justice," he said.

Ritesh, however, claimed he was beaten up by the other accused when he resisted them in raping the girl. He also alleged that the youths snatched his mobile phone.

The other five arrested were identified as Lakhisarai residents Priyanshu, Ayush Ranjan, Aman Raj, Manish Kumar and Saurabh Kumar.

This is the second rape reported in Patna within a week. SSP Maharaaj appealed to girls not to accompany any stranger and take all precautionary measures.