A woman was held on Tuesday in the trainee nun gangrape case, taking the total number of arrests to three in the incident which took place in Kandhamal district.
The arrested woman was identified as Nalini Subhasunder (32), a cousin of the 28-year-old victim, the police said. She was arrested from Mohana in Gajapati district. The police had earlier arrested her cousin brothers Jatindra, the prime accused, and Jogendra Subhasunder. One accused is still at large.
Family rivalry is being suspected as the cause behind the crime. Nun's family was not in good terms with her father's elder brother's family, police said. According to the FIR filed by the victim, who was being trained as a nun at the St Mary Convent in Chennai, she had received a call from a woman informing her that her mother was in serious condition. So, she rushed to her village. After she alighted from the train at the Brahmapur railway station in Ganjam district on July 5, she was picked up by her cousins Jatindra and Jogendra.
The woman, who hailed from Minjapanka in Kandhamal district, had no reason to suspect her cousins and accompanied them to her village. But she was taken to unidentified places, including Gajapati district, where the duo along with a third man allegedly raped her for a week before dropping her back at the Brahmapur railway station on July 11 with a threat not to disclose the incident to anyone. The victim told her mother about her ordeal after reaching home on Saturday last.