BHUBANESWAR (India) - POLICE in eastern India were on Monday interrogating an Australian doctor who was arrested on suspicion of paedophilia, a police spokesman said.

The doctor, a volunteer at the Mary-Ellen Gerber Children's Village orphanage, had identified himself as Paul Allen, 60, but travel documents showed his name as Allen Herbert Rose, police said.

'The accused doctor is not cooperating with the police,' Orissa police official Gyana Mohapatra told AFP on Monday.

'He has not been furnishing any personal details and has been trying to mislead the investigation. We have requested the federal home ministry to take up the matter with the Australian Embassy.'

The doctor was arrested in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state on Wednesday by police acting on complaints from orphanage authorities. He was brought back to Orissa, where he is being held in custody after being denied bail.

The doctor, who has been associated with the orphanage since 2002 but is believed to have been living in India for 25 years, was staying on the premises.

The community in Puri town, 65 kilometres east of state capital Bhubaneswar, is home to 85 boys and girls aged between five and 18.

At least five alleged victims of the doctor, all boys aged between 13 and 17, came forward on Sunday to testify in chambers before a local magistrate, a court source who was present told AFP.

The victims told the court that they had been 'terrorised and tortured by the Australian doctor to have unnatural sex with him', the source said on Monday.

The international voluntary group, with offices in Canada, the United States and France, opened the Puri facility in 2000 to look after children left destitute or orphaned by the October 1999 supercyclone that devastated the state and killed tens of thousands of people.

A 2003 law provides for imprisonment of up to 10 years and a fine of 200,000 rupees (S$6,800) for those found guilty of paedophilia.

In recent years, a number of cases of paedophilia have come to light in India - most of them in the western resort state of Goa.

Last year, a Goa court handed 44 year-old Australian national Warner Wulf Ingo a 10-year prison sentence after finding him guilty of sodomy, sex with minors, abduction and criminal conspiracy. -- AFP