Thin sticks were inserted in the eyes of a Dalit woman when she resisted an attempt to rape her in Katihar district of Bihar during the early hours of Wednesday.

The 45-year-old victim lost her vision in the gruesome incident and has been hospitalised in a serious condition.

Her husband works as a daily wager in Delhi and she stays with her eight-year-old daughter in a settlement along Dakra English village under Amdabad police station area.

According to the daughter, who is an eyewitness to the incident, one Muhammad Shamim came to their house at around 12am on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday on the pretext of talking to her mother.

However, the woman refused to talk and asked Shamim to go. He got angry over this and dragged her out of the residence to a nearby agricultural field where jute crop were being grown.

“I went after them and saw that Shamim had tied the hands of my mother behind her back. He was beating her. She was lying on the ground and screaming. The man stuffed her mouth with jute leaves. He then took a santhi (jute plant stem or stalk), thrust it in both her eyes and ran away,” the woman’s daughter told reporters.

The girl ran to other people living at the settlement and informed them about the incident. They rushed to the spot and took the victim to a nearby primary health centre. The doctors there referred her to

Katihar medical college and hospital. The police were also informed and an FIR was registered.

“We arrested the accused within a few hours of the incident. The woman has said in her statement that he had approached her with bad intentions and she had resisted. We are interrogating him further,” Katihar superintendent of police (SP) Jitendra Kumar told The Telegraph.

Kumar added that the woman hailed from the Bind community, which is counted among the Scheduled Castes.

Doctors of the hospital where the woman has been admitted said that both eyes have been badly damaged and she was unable to see.

“It will take some time to assess her condition and whether she will be able to see again,” a doctor told reporters.

Bihar is witnessing deteriorating law and order situation across the state, including a spurt in crime against women. A majority of the victims hail from the weaker sections of the society.

A Dalit minor girl was abducted and gang-raped in Samastipur district on Monday night while she was returning home from a clothes shop where she worked.