NEW DELHI – Five women working for a charity in remote eastern India wereabducted and gang-raped at gunpoint, police said Friday, in the latesthorrific sex assault in the country.

The women said in their complaint they were performing a play to raiseawareness about human trafficking in the largely tribal Khunti district ofJharkhand state on Tuesday when they were abducted.

The assailants shot videos of the attack and threatened the women if theywent to the police.

The women worked for the non-governmental organisation Asha Kiran which issupported by a local Christian missionary group, police officer RajeshPrasad said.

“We have been questioning several people,” Prasad told AFP.

Police have also rounded up some supporters of Pathalgadi, ananti-establishment self-rule movement popular in several tribal villages.Pathalgadi supporters resent outsiders and do not allow them to enter orsettle in their area.

Khunti is also a hotbed of Maoists, armed guerrillas who have been waging adecades-long insurgency mainly for land rights.

Prasad said the women had undergone medical tests and that police wereawaiting the results.

India has been in the global spotlight since the 2012 gang-rape and murderof a woman on a New Delhi bus sparked angry protests. But the number of sexattacks has grown since then with some 39,000 rape cases reportednationally in 2016.

Jharkhand has especially been in the spotlight after three teenagers wereraped and burnt alive in separate incidents last month. -APP/AFP