Senior police official Milind Shinde told the BBC on Thursday that they were investigating the allegations. The arrested women would be produced in court later in the day, he said.

The police complaint names four other teachers and two trustees of the all-girls school in Thane in the western state of Maharashtra. BBC has reached out to the school authorities for a response.

In their complaint, police have invoked sections of the law that deal with assault and intent to outrage modesty of women. They have also added sections from the stringent Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act.

The parents have alleged that all the students from 5th to 10th classes – who would be between the ages of 10 and 16 – were summoned to a hall by the school principal on Tuesday. There, they were shown photos from the toilet on a projector, including that of a hand stain, and those who had their periods were asked to raise their hands. A teacher collected hand prints of all those who did.

At least 10 to 15 girls who said they weren’t menstruating were then taken to the toilet, forced to strip and went through an inspection.

The child whose mother lodged the police complaint has alleged that her daughter, who didn’t have her period, was scolded and asked why she wasn’t wearing a sanitary pad. Her hand print was also collected. She said her daughter “felt very ashamed” because of what had happened.

Some of the parents told the BBC that their daughters were traumatised.

“The incident raises serious questions about the safety of our children. Our girls are very afraid. The government should take strict action against the school,” one parent said.

The mother of one of the students told BBC Marathi that when confronted, the principal denied everything. “But the school didn’t have an answer when we asked them whether so many girls could be lying,” she said.

Periods have long been a taboo in India where menstruating girls and women are considered impure and excluded from social and religious events.

Incidents of shaming female students have been reported in the past too. In 2017, 70 students were stripped naked at a residential school in Uttar Pradesh by the female warden after she found blood on a bathroom door.

In 2020, 68 students living in a college hostel in Gujarat were strip searched after they stopped reporting their periods to authorities to avoid restrictions which barred them from entering the temple and the kitchen or touching other students.

At meal times, they had to sit away from others, and in the classroom, they were expected to sit on the last bench.

The regressive ideas are being increasingly challenged by urban educated women, but success has been patchy and women in many parts of the country continue to face discrimination.

[BBC]

In Texas, frantic search and rescue efforts continue, with Governor Greg Abbott vowing emergency crews “will not stop until every missing person is accounted for”. Abbott added that it was very likely more missing would be added to the list in the coming days, and urged people to report anyone they think was unaccounted for.

General Thomas Suelzer from the Texas National Guard said search efforts were using Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters with rescue hoists. He said there were 13 Black Hawk helicopters helping in the search effort, including four that arrived from Arkansas. Authorities have also been using reaper drones.

Responders from various agencies are working together on rescue efforts. They include agents from border patrol, the FBI and the National Guard.

More than 250 responders from various agencies have been assigned to the Kerrville area alone to help with search and rescue.

One of those rescue volunteers, named Tim, told the BBC he had never seen any destruction at this scale before.

“I’ve done the floods down in East Texas and Southeast Texas, and hurricanes, and this is a nightmare,” he said.

Another rescue volunteer, named Justin, compared the effort to “trying to find a single hay in a haystack”.

“There’s a wide trail of destruction for miles, and there’s not enough cadaver dogs to go through all of it,” he told the BBC. “It’s hard to access a lot of it with heavy machinery. Guys are trying to pick at it with tools and hands, and they’re not even putting a dent in it – not for lack of effort.”

Questions have been raised about whether authorities provided adequate flood warnings before the disaster, and why people were not evacuated earlier.

Experts say there were a number of factors that contributed to the tragedy in Texas, including the extreme weather, the location of the holiday homes and timing.

Abbott, who had spent part of the day surveying the flood zone, said authorities had issued a storm warning and knew about a possible flash flood, but “didn’t know the magnitude of the storm”.

No-one knew it would lead to a “30-foot high tsunami wall of water”, he said.