Patna, March 6: An 18-year girl was allegedly gangraped and subsequently killed at Kachhar village under Kundra police station in Kaimur district on Saturday evening.

The victim’s body was recovered from a field on the outskirts of the village today.

The police said Jaya Kumari (name changed) was allegedly abducted by a youth, identified as Sarvajeet, and his friends while she was on way to attend her coaching classes at Kudra.

The men took her to a wheat field before raping her. The rapists then strangled her to death to hide their identities.

The victim’s father, Lal Bahadur Choudhary, told the police that Jaya, a Class X student of a local high school, had left her house for the coaching centre around 6pm.

When she did not return home till late in the evening, the family members started searching for her.

The family suspected foul play when they found Sarvajeet missing from his house. Later, a villager found Jaya’s blood-stained body lying in the field and alerted Jaya’s family, which in turn, later apprised the Kudra police station about the incident.

“The body of the girl has been sent to Bhabua for post-mortem,” said Kudra station house officer (SHO) Basant Baitha. He said preliminary investigations suggest that the girl was killed after being raped. “The post-mortem report is awaited,” he said.

The SHO said that raids were on to arrest the prime accused, Sarvajeet, who is reported to be absconding after the incident.

Kaimur superintendent of police Umashankar Sudhanshu said instructions had been given to the SHO concerned to arrest the accused at the earliest.