The Kerala Police have arrested 42 persons and registered a total of 29 cases in connection with the alleged sexual abuse of an 18-year-old woman, reported PTI.

The woman has alleged serial sexual abuse by around 62 men over the past five years, primarily while she was a minor.

The cases have been registered at the state’s Pathanamthitta, Elavumthitta, Pandalam and Malayalappuzha police stations, the news agency reported.

Fourteen more persons were arrested and two new first information reports were filed in the case on Monday, bringing the total number of arrests to 42. The persons have been remanded to judicial custody.

One of the persons who has been accused in the case is abroad, a police officer said.

Those accused of abusing the woman are primarily her classmates, friends and neighbours. Some of them are minors, while others are aged between 20 and 40, representatives from the district Child Welfare Committee said.

The investigation found that several persons who have been accused in the case met the complainant at a private bus stand in Pathanamthitta, from where they took her to several other locations and abused her, the police said according to PTI.

In one of the cases, a young person whom the woman befriended on Instagram took her to a rubber plantation in Ranni, where he and three other people raped her. The woman was at the time studying in Class 12.

In another case, she was allegedly gangraped by four persons near the Government General Hospital in Pathanamthitta in January 2024.

In a third case, two persons allegedly sexually assaulted her in a closed shop.

The complainant shared details of the alleged abuse with volunteers from the Kerala Mahila Samakhya Society, who met her during a routine field visit to her school. The woman is a district-level athlete.

The social workers informed the Child Welfare Committee about the case 15 days ago.

The case is being investigated by a 25-member Special Investigation Team supervised by Deputy Inspector General Ajeetha Begum.

The woman’s alleged abusers will face charges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989, as she is a Dalit.

They have also been booked for aggravated rape, raping a minor, repeatedly raping the same woman, gangrape and sexual harassment under sections of the Indian Penal Code.

They will face additional charges under provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Information Technology Act for violating the woman’s privacy and engaging a child in the creation of sexually explicit images.