A 30-year-old woman belonging to the Oraon tribe was allegedly raped and killed by forest department officials in Bihar’s Rohtas district while she was gathering firewood in a forested area near Rohtasgarh Fort.

The incident triggered a violent protest in which forest officials were attacked and their offices were ransacked on Friday and Saturday. The district administration and police were in the process of taking a complaint from the family members of the victim and registering a case at the time of filing this report on Saturday evening.

The victim was part of a group of around 10 women who had gone to pick firewood from the forested area in the hills near Rohtasgarh Fort on January 4.

“The forest department officials in the area torture the tribal people and that day too they arrived there. The women ran away to escape them, but the victim did not return. It was evening by then and we started looking for her in the jungle on January 5. We managed to locate her body lying in a deep and steep ditch among the hills late in the afternoon. We were unable to reach it on that day,” Shyam Narayan Oraon, a former mukhiya of the area, told The Telegraph.

“We again returned to the spot on January 6. A youth was tied with a rope and lowered down to recover the body. We succeeded with much difficulty. The condition of the body indicated that she has been raped and then killed,” Shyam Narayan added.

Furious over the incident, the Oraon tribals attacked the forest department offices at Rohtas and ransacked them on Friday evening. Forest ranger Hemchandra Mishra and a few officials were injured. The vehicles parked there were also damaged. The employees deserted the office.

Rohtas district administration and the police officials, including district magistrate Dharmendra Kumar and superintendent of police (SP) Vineet Kumar, managed to pacify the protesters on Friday night and sent the body for post-mortem.

“The post-mortem has been conducted but we are yet to receive its report, so we won’t be able to tell about the cause of death and whether the woman was raped,” SP Vineet told The Telegraph.

“The family members of the victim are submitting an application to register an FIR at Rohtas police station. Dehri-on-Sone sub-divisional officer and the sub-divisional police officer are present there. We do not know what complaint they are submitting or whom they are accusing. We will share the details later on,” the SP said.