Swiss tourist, 39, ‘gang-raped’ in India
Swiss tourist, 39, ‘gang-raped’ in India in front of her husband after being attacked by eight men armed with sticks
From Capital Bay
Eight men attacked the couple after they decided to camp near village in Madhya Pradesh
Men allegedly beat them with sticks, 
overpowered the husband and gang-raped the woman
Police are searching for all of the attackers, who ‘stole the pair’s belongings’
By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 04:54 EST, 16 March 2013 | UPDATED: 11:20 EST, 16 March 2013
A gang of eight men allegedly raped a 39-year-old tourist and beat her husband with sticks while they were holidaying in India.
Police said that the couple had been brutally attacked in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh on Friday night.
Thugs attacked the pair at a village near Datia town, said district superintendent of police CS Solanki.
It is the latest in a string of violent sex attacks in India that has shocked the subcontinent, after one 23-year-old was raped and tortured in December, and a 29-year-old who was grabbed from a bus in and gang raped in Amritsar by six men in January.
Investigation: The Swiss woman who was allegedly attacked (centre), is escorted by policewomen for a medical examination at a hospital in Gwalior, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh
The couple had been cycling from Orchha to Seonda and decided to camp near a village for a night.
The pack of men pounced on the couple, beating them with wooden sticks before overpowering the man and gang-raping his wife, the husband claimed.
Police said the gang then stole the pair’s belongings and fled, Independent Online reported.
D.K. Arya, deputy inspector ge
neral of police said the gang took a laptop, 10,000 rupees (£120) and a mobile phone, CNN reported.
The Swiss woman was taken to hospital, where medical examinations proved she had been raped, The News Tribe reported.
CS Solanki said eight people have been questioned in connection with the incident, but officers are still searching for all of the attackers.
And in a shocking turn of events the woman was paraded through a staring crowd as photographers jostled to take her pict
ures, mere hours after she had been attacked.
Cloaked with a towel to cover her face and head, two female police officers gripped the victim’s arms as she was taken to hospital for a medical examination.
Her picture was taken as she was pulled through the swarm of people.
One woman is raped every 20 minu
tes in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
But police estimate only four out of 10 rapes are reported, largely due to victims’ fear of being shamed by their families and communities.
The Swiss woman and her husband were touring the state by bicycle and were camping overnight in the forest.
Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Tilman Renz described the case as ‘deeply disturbing’ and said Swiss diplomats were assisting the couple.
The diplomats called on Indian authorities ‘to do everything to quickly find the perpetrators so that they can be held accountable,’ Renz said in a statement.
Last month, the Swiss government issued a travel notice for India that included a warning about ‘increasing numbers of rapes and other sexual offenses’ in the South Asian nation.
India has seen a wave o
f violent sex attacks that have swept the subcontinent
The violent attack comes mere months after a horrifying attack on a young woman in the Indian capital.
Five men and a juvenile are awaiting trial for the sickening gang rape and attack the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist in Delhi in December last year.
The assault triggered nationwide protests and an intense debate about rampant crime against women in India.
One of the accused is dead after he was found hanging in his cell.
Police allege the six attacked the woman and her male companion on the bus as the couple returned home after watching Life Of Pi on December 16.
The woman was repeatedly raped and tortured with a metal bar.The couple were also severely beaten before being thrown onto a road.
The woman died of internal injuries in a Singapore hospital two weeks later.
In January a woman was travelling to her in-laws’ home in Punjab when she was allegedly snatched and driven to a district bordering Amritsar, the Sikh holy city.
Five men joined the driver and conductor, who had taken her by motorbike to an unknown address, and took turns to rape the 29-year-old.
They dumped her near her in-laws’ village the next morning where she told relatives of her ordeal, police said.
Six men were arrested and a seventh was on the run from police, officers said.
A 14-year-old schoolgirl was put on life support in hospital after being brutally gang-raped in rural India in late January.
Police had failed to make any arrests since the horrific attack in the Jalandhar district of Punjab ten days after the attack.
For more on this story go to:
UPDATE: 6 Men arrested in gang rape of tourist
Suspects in India tourist gang-rape case appear in court
By Harmeet Shah Singh. Sumnima Udas and Aliza Kassim, CNN
March 18, 2013
New Delhi (CNN) — As the men accused of raping and robbing a Swiss tourist in central India appeared in court Monday, protesters said the case is a troubling example of the growing problem of violence against women.
Opposition lawmakers organized protests throughout India’s Madhya Pradesh state Monday and called on the state’s home minister to resign.
“We are protesting due to a collapse of law and order,” said Ajay Singh, an opposition leader. “This state has the highest number of women abductions and crimes against women.”
Demonstrations erupted nationwide after the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi in December. Now last week’s attack on a Swiss woman is focusing fresh attention on sexual assaults in India.
The woman and her husband were on a cycling tour across India and had set up camp near a forest in Datia district last week when a group of men allegedly assaulted them, beating the husband and raping the wife, according to police.
The six suspects appeared in court Monday and will remain in custody until their next court appearance on Tuesday, said Chandra Shekhar Solanke, a district police superintendent.
“We have taken swift action,” Shivraj Singh Chauhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, told CNN IBN. “All the accused have been arrested and I assure that we will not allow such cases to happen again.”
The men accused of attacking the Swiss couple last week are members of a local tribe who live near where the travelers were camping, said D.K. Arya, deputy inspector general of police.
Investigators have recovered valuables stolen from couple during the attack, police said Monday, including a laptop computer, a mobile phone and 10,000 rupees ($185).
The woman, who was briefly hospitalized after the attack, alleges that four of the men raped her, according to Inspector-General S.M. Afzal. The other two men arrested by police are suspected of involvement in robbing the couple, he said.
Afzal said the six suspects had confessed. But confessions in custody are not admissible as evidence in Indian courts.
Police have sent blood samples from the men for DNA testing.
Authorities offered different accounts Monday of the next steps in their investigation.
Police Superintendent Solanke said the female victim had already helped identify suspects when arrests were made Sunday.
But Arya, the police deputy inspector-general, said Monday that the victim hadn’t seen the suspects since their arrest. She told authorities she would not be able to identify the suspects because the attack happened when it was dark, Arya said.
Instead, her husband will likely be tasked with identifying the suspects in a police lineup, Arya said.
The couple, who had been staying at a guesthouse in Datia district during the investigation, are in New Delhi at the moment, according to Afzal. Police have asked them to return to Datia for a possible identification of the accused men, he said.
Linus von Castelmur, the Swiss ambassador to India, issued a statement Monday saying that the two are currently recovering at the embassy in New Delhi but had “expressed their readiness to fully cooperate in the ongoing investigation and identification process.”
They plan to stay in India for the time being, he said.
The case comes at a time in India when there are calls for stricter laws on sexual assault and changes in cultural attitudes toward women.
For more on this story go to:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/18/world/asia/india-tourist-gangrape/index.html
