Two teenage girls were kidnapped and subjected to criminal assault, including rape, in the Naokot area of Sindh's Mirpurkhas district, it emerged on Tuesday.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Asad Chaudhry said the girls, one of whom is married, were kidnapped on Sunday, February 6, and were recovered the next day after a police raid at a house in the area.

"The young married woman and her teenage sister-in-law were examined by medico-legal officers at the rural health centre and it has been confirmed that they were subjected to rape," the Mirpurkhas SSP said. He, however, dispelled reports on social media that the girls had been subjected to gang rape.

According to the SSP, the girls were from the Rajput community and were kidnapped and raped in captivity, allegedly by some men from the area's Tungri community.

He said the girls and their families had accused men from the Tungri community of the crime, adding that the offence had been committed in revenge after a married woman from the Tungri community had eloped with a man from their community.

M, the father of one of the girls, told Dawn.com that the man who eloped with the woman from the Tungri community was his paternal cousin and the woman was the sister of one of the primary suspects in the case, Ali Nawaz.

"We don't know where he is living with the woman, but the Tungri community has let loose a reign of terror against my family for no reason," he said over the phone.

Before the girls were recovered, a close relative of theirs had registered a first information report (FIR) against 20 men of the Tungri community.

The FIR, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, was registered under sections 324 (attempt to murder), 365-B (kidnapping or abducting with the intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person), 504 (intentional insult with the intent to provoke the breach of peace), 452 (house-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint), 440 (mischief committed after preparation to cause death or hurt), 395 (punishment for dacoity), 398 (attempt to commit robbery or dacoity when armed with a deadly weapon) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of a common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code and section 3(ii) of the Prevention of Trafficking Act, 2018.

According to the FIR, men from the Tungri community had forcefully entered the complainant's house, looted valuables at gunpoint and taken away his wife and sister on February 6.

Police and protesting villagers earlier told local reporters that about two dozen men, some of them carrying firearms, broke into a house in Nafees Nagar, ransacked the furniture and fixtures present inside, collected cash and other valuables and kidnapped the two girls, aged 19 and 14, at gunpoint on Sunday.

"We had to stage a protest on Naokot Road and block the road to build pressure for the recovery of the girls," M said.

On Monday, several hundred of the Rajput community's members had taken to a section of the Naokot-Mirpurkhas road, demanding immediate recovery of the kidnapped girls and the arrest of the culprits. They had raised slogans against the area police and attackers, lit a fire in the middle of the road and held a sit-in causing disruption in the movement of vehicular traffic for several hours.

In the meantime, Naokot police, with the help of informers, had carried out a raid on a house and recovered both the girls.

They were escorted to the Nafees Nagar police post before they were taken to the Naokot police station, where they narrated their ordeal, according to an earlier Dawn report.

However, M told Dawn.com that the girls were initially taken to the house of a policeman, Assistant Sub-Inspector Gulzar Tungri, of the Nafees Nagar police post.

According to SSP Chaudhry, the girls told police that one of the suspects, identified as Nawab, had "subjected one of the girls to criminal assault" while another suspect, Ali Nawaz, had raped the other girl.

The SSP said Nawab and 11 other suspects had been arrested of the 20 nominated in the FIR. Primary suspect Ali Nawaz was at large, he added.