A new species group, the riverata species group, is established within the genus Scaptodrosophila based on morphological and molecular evidence for five known and five new species from China: S. abdentatasp. nov., S. cederholmi (Okada, 1988), S. crocata (Bock, 1976), S. paraclubata (Sundaran & Gupta, 1991), S. platyrhinasp. nov., S. puncticeps (Okada, 1956), S. riverata (Singh & Gupta, 1977), S. serrateifoliaceasp. nov., S. sinuatasp. nov. and S. tanyrhinasp. nov. A key to this group is provided. Furthermore, 51 mtDNA COI sequences belonging to S. puncticeps, S. riverata and the five new species are used for verifying species boundaries defined by the morphological data.