The victim was raped in West Bengal, Bihar.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW DELHI: Five men have been arrested in India and charged with kidnapping and repeatedly gang raping a 23-year-old Japanese student for more than a month at multiple locations, in West Bengal and Bihar, a shocking case which brings again to the fore the unabated violence against women in the country, which has shaken the confidence of the public and made a huge dent in tourism numbers.
Police in Kolkata say the assaults took place over a period of more than a month from November 23 and that an organized gang is suspected of targeting single women tourists, reported the BBC.
Pallav Kanti Ghosh, Kolkata police commissioner, told BBC Hindi that two of the men – said to be brothers – approached the 23-year-old victim as tourist guides after she arrived in the city and checked into a hotel in an area popular with foreign tourists.
“One of the men spoke very fluent Japanese,” he said. “They said: ‘We are guides and want to take you sight-seeing.’
He added: “They took her to Digha [a beach resort in West Bengal state] on November 23. There they sexually assaulted her and robbed her of 76,000 rupees [£1,200] using her ATM card.”
She was then taken to Bodh Gaya, the holiest site of Buddhism and a major pilgrimage and tourist center, the BBC report said.
India Today reported that the residents of Taro Village in Bodh Gaya found nothing amiss that a Japanese girl was seen in their village. Little did they know that the 23-year-old tourist was being kept confined and was repeatedly raped by two brothers – Sajid Khan (32) and Javed Khan (25) – for close to three weeks. The brothers, arrested since then, had even taken her to a village doctor when she took ill during her captivity but no eyebrows were raised.
“Since both the brothers are fluent in Japanese, as they have worked as tourist guides in Gaya and elsewhere, nobody suspected anything in their village,” Akhilesh Singh, station house officer (SHO) of Fatehpur police station said.
Many young boys from the Gaya village, falling under Fatehpur police station, work as guides at the world famous tourist destination which sees visitors from across the world, especially Buddhists, Today noted.
According to the India Today report the victim had checked into a hotel in Kolkata in November and came in contact with three Japanese-speaking persons -Sabir Khan, Wasim Khan and Sajid Iqbal – who identified themselves as tour operators and offered to help her in visiting Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and other places linked to Buddhism and also acquaint her with the “true Indian culture and traditions” in the villages near Bodh Gaya.
“We have come to know that they had taken the Japanese tourist to Bodh Gaya, Nalanda and Rajgir for sightseeing,” the SHO said.
At Gaya, the brothers took her to their village where they allegedly confined her and repeatedly raped her for several days. “Later, when her condition deteriorated, she was made to board a bus to Varanasi,” the SHO was quoted as saying.
It was in Varanasi that she somehow managed to talk to some Japanese tourists she encountered and sought their help in getting in touch with the Japanese consulate in Kolkata. Following that a team Kolkata police arrested the two brothers with the help of Bengal police. After being produced in the Gaya court on Friday, the brothers were subsequently taken to Kolkata on transit remand. The brothers are among the five persons who have been arrested in the case after an FIR was lodged in Kolkata in this connection.
This is not the first time when a Japanese tourist had faced such an ordeal in Gaya. In April 2010, a 25-year-old Japanese girl was gang-raped by five men while she was on way to Gaya railway station in an auto-rickshaw to catch a train to Kolkata. The auto-rickshaw driver along with four of his accomplices, who were following them, had stopped the vehicle at a secluded place under Amawa police station and gang-raped the tourist. Three of the accused were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment within a month after a speedy trial was conducted by the state government.
In May last year, another tourist guide had duped a Japanese youth of `3 lakh during his visit to Bodh Gaya, India Today reported.