Soma told the BBC the initial treatment she received at the hospital was far from satisfactory.

After she regained consciousness on 12 June, she told her husband and the doctor who treated her about the gangrape. "The doctor asked me while administering an injection, 'Were you raped as well?' I kept telling her, 'Yes, Madam, I was'," she said.

Ashok Kumar, the Civil Surgeon of Begusarai, however, told the BBC that the woman was brought in with complains of stomach pain. And that they were informed of the gangrape only on 13 June "after which the physicians immediately conducted her medical examination".

The hospital sent Soma home after that, but she was back in hospital the next day after she lost consciousness, her husband told the BBC. She was again discharged a day later.

"A village midwife, who examined her after she kept fainting and complaining of intense stomach pain, warned that there was something inside her body. On the morning of 18 June, Soma showed us a bullet casing which had dropped out from her vagina," he said, adding that he then took her back to the hospital.

"It was an empty cartridge or shell casing," Civil Surgeon Kumar said. "We re-examined her and doctors removed other objects from her. She is currently stable and recovering."

Soma's case has provoked outrage in India and drawn comparisons with the horrific 2012 Delhi gang rape - and subsequent death - of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who was also violated with objects.