A 24-year-old youth has been arrested for the alleged rape and murder of a minor in Bihar’s Gopalganj district.

Police arrested the accused Jai Kishore Sah and forwarded him to jail on Wednesday and said it was a case of rape and murder in which the victim’s private parts were also mutilated.

The incident occurred at Bakhraur village under Sidhwalia police station in Gopalganj district on Tuesday. The area is around 160km northwest of the state capital Patna.

According to the police, the 9-year-old victim had been playing on her own at around 10 in the morning and disappeared soon after. Her parents started looking for her all around and asked their neighbours too, but in vain. In the evening, they became very worried and started searching frantically in neighbouring homes. It was then that they came upon a sack in the neighbour’s house with blood oozing out of it and discovered her body.

Subsequently, they informed the police who came and sent the body for post-mortem. Police said the owner of the house claimed her nephew had committed the crime while she was not at home.

“The girl was raped and then smothered to death. The accused had tortured her brutally. There were injuries on various parts of the victim’s body. The accused stuffed the body in a gunny bag with the intention to dispose it of later,” said Sidhwalia station house officer (SHO) Ranjeet Kumar Paswan.

According to the police, the accused is in the business of fruits.

Meanwhile, a video of alleged gang rape of a woman by seven persons was widely shared on various social media platforms on Wednesday. Bihar police traced the site of the crime to an area near a government high school under Aandar police station in Siwan district.

An FIR has been registered in connection with the incident. Siwan superintendent of police Abhinav Kumar said that four of the seven accused have been identified and a special team has been formed to arrest them.

This is the third gang rape incident in Bihar this month. The two earlier incidents happened in Patna and Muzaffarpur districts and came to light after videos of the heinous acts were also shared on social media.

Bihar bridge collapses

A 70-metre bridge over the Bakra river in Araria district of Bihar collapsed late on Tuesday evening while several people and vehicles were crossing it.

It is feared that some of them could have drowned in the incident that happened under Jokihat police station.

The district administration has roped in the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) to conduct search operations in the flooded river.