Detroit — Federal prosecutors filed new charges in the nation's first case involving female genital mutilation, accusing one doctor of mutilating three more prepubescent girls and alleging one girl was drugged.

The new charges bring to a total of nine girls from three states who prosecutors say underwent the illegal procedure at a Livonia medical clinic since 2015.

The indictment was filed one week after The Detroit News exclusively reported that a grand jury was weighing new charges in a case first filed last year. As many as six members of the Dawoodi Bohra, a Muslim sect from India, were questioned by a federal grand jury last week, including one woman from Illinois. 

The case is being closely followed in India, where the Dawoodi Bohra are based, and by international human rights groups opposed to female genital mutilation, a federal crime since 1996.

The indictment filed Wednesday refers to three girls prosecutors say underwent a procedure performed by Dr. Jumana Nagarwala at the Burhani Medical Clinic on Farmington Road in Livonia in 2015. The three girls are from Illinois and were born in 2007 and 2008.

Read more here>