Madhupur police arrested five staffers of an inter-district bus on charges of killing and gang-raping a law student on a moving bus Friday night.

A team of police raided Madhupur bus station early yesterday and arrested Habib, 40, Gendu, 35, Shamim, 30, Akram, 30, and Jahangir, 20, and seized the bus.

Bus helpers Shamim, Akram, and Jahangir have already made confessional statements before senior judicial magistrates, court officials said. Police were interrogating the two others.

Being informed by a bus passenger, police recovered the body of Rupa Khatun Pramanik, 27, from beside Tangail-Mymensingh highway on Pachish Mile area around 11:00pm on Friday.

Kaiyum Khan Siddique, in-charge of Aronkhola Police Outpost in Madhupur, said the crimes took place in a bus of Chhowa Paribahan heading to Mymensingh from Bogra. He added that the arrestees hail from different area in Mymensingh.

He added that at one point in the journey, all passengers of the bus got down, and helper Shamim took Rupa, who boarded the bus in Bogra, to the rear and tried to rape her.

The victim then gave him Tk 5,000 and her mobile phone to Shamim and pleaded to be let go, said the officer who is investigating the case.

Shamim took the money and the phone and then raped her. Two other helpers Akram and Jahangir also raped her while Habib was driving and Gendu was sleeping, the arrestees claimed to police.

When the bus was near Madhupur, Rupa started screaming. The three bus helpers then broke her neck and threw the body out in a secluded area, he said.

The victim's identity was revealed when her elder brother Hafizur Pramanik came to the police station on Monday night after seeing her picture on the news.

A law student in Dhaka, Rupa worked in a multinational company in Sherpur. She hailed from Sirajganj's Tarash upazila.

Police had buried her unidentified after an autopsy on Saturday and lodged a murder case in this connection.

Rupa went to Bogra on Friday to sit for a teachers' registration examination. After the exam, she along with an acquaintance from her hometown boarded the bus in the evening.

The man got down at Elenga in Tangail.

As Rupa did not reach Mymensingh on time, one of her colleagues called her. A man answered and said Rupa had mistakenly left her phone and switched off the phone afterwards.

When Rupa did not show up at work on Saturday morning, her colleagues informed her younger sister.

Unable to trace her, Rupa's brother Hafizur lodged a general diary with Mymensingh Sadar Police Station on Saturday and continued to search for her until they learnt what had happened from the media.