India police arrest five more men over gang rape of Spanish tourist

The victim and her husband were attacked in the eastern state of Jharkhand, said police
Three men arrested for the alleged gang rape of a Spanish tourist are brought by police to be produced before the Dumka District Court on Monday
AP
Josh Salisbury6 March 2024

Indian police have arrested five more people over the alleged gang rape of a Brazilian-Spanish tourist.

The 28-year-old woman and her husband had stopped in the district of Dumki, in the eastern state of Jharkhand when the alleged attack took place on Friday.

The identity of the arrest men, who are also accused of beating the couple, has not been released.

Three people were arrested on Saturday and at a press conference on Monday, police said they had arrested five more.

In a now-deleted video about the incident, the woman said: “Something happened to us that we wouldn't wish on anyone.”

Her husband added: "We were assaulted in the tent. We were beaten. They put a knife to our necks and she was raped by seven guys."

The assault took place in a forest late Friday in eastern Jharkhand state's Dumka district where they were camping on their way to neighbouring Nepal.

Pitamber Singh Kherwar, superintendent of local police, said the couple were found around 11pm local time (5.30pm GMT) on Friday on a roadside, looking like they had suffered a beating.

He said two people told authorities "their modesty had been outraged".

The Spanish Foreign Ministry said on Sunday it was sending staff to the area and had been in touch with authorities.

Its Brazilian counterpart said it had sought contact with the Brazilian citizen through its embassy in New Delhi and was available to give every assistance applicable.

Conversations around sexual violence became more prominent in India after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi sparked huge protests.

However, activists say there more still needs to be done with tens of thousands of rapes reported every year.

Reports of horrific sexual assaults on women have become familiar in India, where police recorded 31,516 rape cases in 2022, a 20% increase from 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

However, the true figure is believed to be higher.

In 2022, a British tourist was raped in front of her partner in Goa, while earlier this year, an Indian-American woman said she was raped at a hotel in New Delhi.

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