The tourist from California was drugged and raped by two men in Dharamsala.
By Raif Karerat
An American tourist who was visiting India for the first time has alleged she was gang raped earlier this week while visiting the popular tourist destination of Dharamsala.
The 46-year-old Californian had described walking through the town’s main market when two men grabbed hold of her. She then passed out but on regaining consciousness said she became aware that she had been raped by the pair, reported The Guardian.
“She says she had gone out for dinner at around 9 p.m. When she was returning at around midnight, someone grabbed her and then she fell unconscious. She said when she came to, she realized she had been raped. She then went to the police station,” senior police officer Renu Sharma informed NDTV.
The woman had reportedly come from California a month ago and was alone. She visited other popular hill towns Kullu and Manali before coming to Dharamsala, famed for its Tibetan community and home to the Dalai Lama.
The Times of India reported that a case had been “registered” against “two unknown assailants” in connection with the case.
“Spot inspection and medical examination of complainant has been done. The matter is being investigated,” Sharma told Asian News International.
The rape is one of several reported in the past few years by women tourists at a time when the country has been grappling with an endemic wave of sexual violence.
India has faced intense scrutiny over its efforts to curb violence against women following the fatal gang rape of an Indian medical student on a New Delhi bus in December 2012, which triggered a global uproar.
On March 15, a group of men raped a 39-year-old Swiss tourist in Madhya Pradesh and accosted her husband.
The Swiss couple was camping near a forest in India’s Datia district when a group of men beat the husband before gang raping his wife, district deputy superintendent of police, R.S. Prajapati, told CNN.
Four days later, a 25-year-old British tourist jumped off the balcony of her hotel room in Agra, fearing that the hotel owner was planning to sexually assault her.
In February a 20-year-old Japanese woman was raped by her tour guide and his accomplices in the city of Jaipur, in the western state of Rajasthan.
The woman said she was given food laced with drugs before being attacked, Dharam Chand Jain, police inspector-general for Jaipur district, told Agence France-Presse.
Three people were sentenced to 20 years in prison by a court in Jaipur earlier this month, while three others were found guilty of conspiring to gang-rape the woman, have been sentenced to two years each, according to NDTV.
In a separate case, five men are also currently facing trial for the gang rape of another Japanese woman who was visiting Kolkata in November 2014.
Pallab Kanti Ghosh, joint police commissioner in Kolkata, informed CNN that the victim, a 22 year-old from Saitama, Japan, was approached on November 20 of last year by a man who spoke Japanese “very well,” and convinced her to accompany him and a friend to a variety of tourist spots over the following days.
The woman was allegedly trapped and taken to Digha in East Midnapore and then to Bodhgaya in Bihar, where she was subsequently gang raped.
The victim told police that she had also been forced to remove money from her bank accounts, and that the men had also withdrawn money using her ATM card without her knowledge.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, incidents of rape in India have gone up tenfold in the past 40 years. From 1971 to 2012, recorded cases rose from just under 2,500 to almost 25,000.
Although the per capita rate of rapes reported to the police in India is below that of many developed nations, some experts believe that many sexual attacks go unreported and that the actual number is far higher due to the stigma associated with being a rape victim in India, according to the New York Times.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, citing past rapes and sexual harassment in India, warns that while most rape victims are local residents, “foreign women” particularly in tourist areas “are at risk and should exercise vigilance.”
“Women should observe stringent security precautions, including avoiding use of public transport after dark without the company of known and trustworthy companions, restricting evening entertainment to well-known venues, and avoiding isolated areas when alone at any time of day,” it warns.
India is also reeling with shock with another Nirbhaya like attack on a moving bus being reported from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
The Indian Express reported a woman was allegedly raped in a moving local bus here after she had boarded it late night. According to SP (Bhopal South) Anshuman Singh, two persons, including the main accused and the driver of the bus, have been arrested in this connection.
Police said that the woman, who was alone, took the bus at around 11 P.M. from the Chhola area. A man identified as ‘Pandit’ thereafter allegedly raped her on the moving bus. Police said the main accused was assisted in the alleged crime by two accomplices, one of whom was the driver of the mini-bus, identified as one Salman.
The bus was supposed to drop the woman off at Pul Bogda area, but did not stop there and took her to the Maida Mill area instead, which is an isolated place, police said. There, the woman was allegedly raped on the moving bus as it made rounds of the area.
The woman later went to a nearby police station where she narrated her ordeal, following which Pandit and Salman were arrested, police added, the Express report added.