(CNN) A student alleging she was kidnapped, drugged and gang-raped by five men in India’s Haryana state last week says two of her attackers raped her in 2013, police said.
Three of the five men accused in the July 13 attack were arrested, police said Tuesday. They are scheduled to appear in court Wednesday.
It’s not clear if the alleged perpetrators from the 2013 attack were among the three arrested. Police said they are working to find the other two suspects, along with the car used to abduct the woman.
Five people kidnapped the 21-year-old student in Rohtak in the northern state of Haryana, according to Pushpa Khatri, Rohtak deputy superintendent.
The group then drugged the woman before gang-raping her and dumping her in a park, Khatri said.
A passer-by found the woman unconscious and took her to a nearby hospital.
Khatri told CNN that, according to the woman, two of the five accused are the same perpetrators who raped her in 2013.
‘Threats’
The second-year college student from a poor, low-caste Dalit family was first assaulted nearly three years ago in Bhiwani, also in Haryana.
She was raped on two separate occasions by two men over four days in October 2013, police said.
They were arrested and jailed, but the woman’s family members told police they were forced to move to Rohtak after continuing to receive threats from the accused and pressured to withdraw the case against them.
The two men were released last month.
It’s the latest in a series of shocking rapes that have unleashed outrage in India and internationally.
The fatal 2012 gang-rape of a student on a bus in Delhi shone a light on the grim frequency of sexual assaults in the country and led to a toughening up of the laws and punishments surrounding rape, but attacks continue to be reported in the media on a daily basis.
On average, according to government statistics, a woman in India is raped every 22 minutes.
According to local media reports, members of the Dalit caste held small protests in Rohtak over the weekend to demand justice for the woman.
