Five men allegedly gang-raped and killed a minor after dragging her out through the window while she was asleep in her house at a village in Vaishali district of Bihar, police said.

The police have arrested three of the accused.

The incident occurred at Bhagwanpur Ratti village on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday. Family members and villagers found her body in the morning.

Though the villagers said that the girl was 14-years-old, the police have maintained that she was aged 16.

Her parents had gone out to attend the marriage function of a relative, while she and her grandfather were at home. When the girl did not come out of her room in the morning, her grandfather knocked at the door. He raised an alarm after not getting a response and a few neighbours rushed to the house. They found the window in the girl’s room was open but she was not inside.

The villagers informed her family members and they together mounted a search. They found her body a few hours later in an orchard while looking across the village and farms.

“A few men had been loitering around the house over the last few days. She was abducted through the window of her room, raped and then killed,” the girl’s uncle said.

Police officials said that prima facie it seemed that the victim was raped and murdered. The doctors who conducted the post-mortem also said that the girl was raped before being killed.

Vaishali Sadar sub-divisional police officer Raghav Dayal told The Telegraph that the window of the room did not have a steel grill, and she could have been abducted through it.

“We have arrested three out of the five accused. We have not received the post-mortem report yet. The matter is under investigation so I cannot tell more,” Vaishali superintendent of police Maneesh, who goes by one name, told this newspaper.

Meanwhile, the villagers pelted stones and attacked the houses of the five accused. Police personnel have been deployed in the village to prevent any untoward incident.