I am not sure whether the problem is with groff or libstdc++, probably the latter BUT after upgrading to groff-1.15-9 from -8 all binaries in the package started core dumping. The problem is more likely due to one of the compatibility libraries in the libstdc++ package. I went back to groff-1.11a-6, which uses an earlier version of ++ and that works. FYI
It is due to libc-2.1.90 -- revert to libc-2.1.3 to avoid this. See my bug-report in course fo submission!