A 39-year-old woman and her husband were cycling across
central India. On March 15, on their way to Agra, they set up a tent
near a village en route, where they were attacked by about a dozen men
who robbed them, raped the woman and brutally beat up the man.
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Swiss woman is escorted by policewomen for a medical examination
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Five villagers have confessed
to gang-raping a Swiss tourist in central India, police said yesterday,
in an incident that has renewed focus on the rampant violence against
women in the country. The woman was on a cycling holiday with her
husband in the impoverished Madhya Pradesh state when six men attacked
the couple on Friday night, sexually assaulting the woman in front of
her husband and robbing the pair, police said. “We have detained five
men and they have confessed to gang-raping the woman and attacking her
husband,” local police official MS Dhodee told AFP. The five men, who
eke out a living as small-scale farmers, have been arrested on charges
of rape and robbery, Dhodee said.
Police are searching for a sixth man,
who was also involved in the crime, he said. The alleged rapists live in
a village near the forested area where the couple had stopped to camp
for the night, while on a cycling trip to the popular tourist
destination of Agra in northern India, Dhodee said. “They were passing
by, noticed the couple putting up their tent and saw an opportunity to
attack and rape the woman,” he said. Her husband was tied up during the
attack. They also stole a laptop, a mobile phone and 10,000 rupees
($185) from the couple, which the police are trying to recover, added
Dhodee.
After the attack, the rape victim, aged
about 40, and her husband, reported to be around 30, stopped a
motorcyclist who took them to the nearest police station, said
SonntagsBlick, a Swiss German-language newspaper. She underwent a
medical examination at a local hospital before leaving for the Indian
capital Delhi, police said. “The victim and her husband have left for
Delhi, since there was no need for her to stay in hospital here,”
another local police official UC Shadangi told AFP. Shadangi said that
police were in touch with Swiss embassy officials, who declined to
comment to AFP about the case. The Swiss foreign ministry in Bern
released a statement on Saturday expressing deep shock at the “tragic
incident”. The couple arrived in Mumbai last month after visiting Iran
and began a cycling holiday across India, making their way to Orchha, a
popular foreign tourist haunt in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday, Shadangi
said.
The attack comes just three months after
thousands took to the streets in nationwide protests following the
fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi. The
victim, a physiotherapy student died from internal injuries after being
savagely assaulted by six men. One of her alleged attackers was found
dead in his prison cell in New Delhi on Monday.
Police suspect he hanged himself, but
his family says he was murdered. The government has since opened an
investigation into his death. India’s government is facing heavy
pressure to step up efforts to protect women after the deadly gangrape
in the capital last December. Under a new bill approved by India’s
cabinet last week, rapists face a minimum 20- year jail term and the
death penalty if the victim dies from injuries or is left in a
persistent vegetative state.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, one woman is raped every 20 minutes.
But police estimate only four out of 10 rapes are reported, largely due to victims' fear of being shamed by their families and communities.
Concern remains high in India over the safety and status of
women and girls in the country of 1.2 billion. Rape is one aspect of a
wide range of violence, including domestic assaults, against women in
India that claims many thousands of lives each year, according to rights
workers. The Congress-led government has been under heavy pressure to
strengthen legal protection for India’s women following the December
attack on the student who died from internal injuries after being
savagely assaulted by six men.
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