Two persons were arrested on Wednesday for the gang rape of a preacher with police saying that a three-member special investigation team (SIT) was trying to trace the two others accused of attacking the woman in an ashram in Godda in the wee hours of Tuesday.

Police lodged an FIR against four persons, two of whom were named, at Mufassil police station in Godda on Tuesday on the basis of a complaint by the victim. While Dipak Rana, a history-sheeter, was first detained on Tuesday morning and later formally arrested at night, his brother Ashish was held on Wednesday morning.

Godda SP Y.S. Ramesh said, “The two accused Dipak Rana and Ashish Rana have been arrested. We are trying to zero in on two of their accomplices so that we can nab them too.”

Maharshi Mehi Ashram, where the assault took place, is located in Pathwara village in Ranidih panchayat in the Pathwara-Kathon area under Mufassil police station of Godda. The accused are from the adjoining hamlet of Pasra.

According to Ramesh, rape was committed by only two persons. “The Rana brothers raped the victim while the two accomplices had accompanied them to the crime scene. All of them barged into the ashram with firearms after scaling the boundary wall,” he said.

At the time of the attack, there were four women and a sadhu at the ashram. The culprits held them hostage at gunpoint and dragged the victim to another room to commit the crime.

The preacher who was assaulted is a native of Bokaro but had been staying at an ashram in Varanasi before coming to Godda a few months back.

In a statement to local television channels, she had demanded the death sentence for all the four accused. “They (her attackers) were four in number. They violated my body. It is very difficult for a sadhvi to tolerate this pain, which will be with me for the rest of my life. I demand the death sentence for all four culprits through a speedy trial,” she said.