Kendrapara: Police arrested five persons for molesting a minor girl and recording the video of the incident and uploading it on social media.

The incident took place on June 14 when the girl had gone to a picnic with her friends on Pentha sea beach under Rajnagar tehsil.

"Finding the girl alone, they dragged her to a deserted place in the casuarinas forest cover near the beach and molested her. They recorded the video of the incident on their phones and uploaded it on social media," said additional superintendent of police Bikash Chandra Dash.

The police probed the matter following a complaint lodged by the victim girl's father a couple of days ago.

The cyber crime wing of district police found that the allegations were true.

After preliminary investigation, the accused persons - Mani Mandal, 25, Sukant Mandal, 30, Akshaya Sethy, 38, Nimai Padhiary, 34, and Sambhu Mandal, 19 were arrested.

They said they committed the crime under the influence of liquor.

The arrested persons were booked under sections 354 (outraging the modesty of woman or girl), 292 (representation of person or any other object in obscene manner), 294 (obscene act), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation), 509 (gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence Act, 2012 and the Information Technology Act, 2000.

As directed by state police headquarters, the district police are maintaining zero tolerance in cases where obscene photos or videos were uploaded on social media.