Seven men are now in custody in India for the alleged
gang-rape of a tourist and assault on her husband, authorities said, in a case
that has shone a new spotlight on the endemic problem of sexual violence
against women in the country.
On Saturday, police announced that three men had been
arrested in connection with the incident and that they were seeking four more.
Dumka Deputy Commissioner Anjaneyulu Dodde confirmed to CNN
Tuesday that four further suspects had now been detained.
The couple, who had been traveling by motorcycle from the
state of West Bengal to neighboring Nepal, were found late Friday by police
officers on patrol, said Pitambar Singh Kherwar, superintendent of Dumka
district police in Jharkhand state.
They were taken to hospital, where the woman told the doctor
she had been raped, he said.
Police know the identities of the wanted suspects and have
formed a special investigative team, Kherwar said. It is unclear whether the
three arrested suspects have legal representation.
CNN is not naming the female victim, in accordance with
Indian law that prevents the naming of victims of sexual violence. Police have
not disclosed the names or nationalities of the couple.
The arrests come after a travel vlogger couple on Saturday
posted on their Instagram account that they had “knives (held) to our throats,”
during an attack in India. The woman had been raped and brought to the hospital
for DNA testing, they said.
The couple posts in Spanish, and the woman says on her
Instagram page that she is Brazilian.
On their Instagram story, the woman showed bruises on her
face, saying, “This is what my face looks like, but it isn’t what hurts the
most. I thought I was going to die.”
In a follow-up post Sunday, the couple thanked their
followers for their support, saying they are doing well and that “the police is
doing everything possible to catch” the remaining suspects.
India’s National Commission for Women (NCW) condemned the
alleged attack.
NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma has spoken to the victim and
extended all required assistance, the organization posted on social platform X
on Saturday.
Jharkhand minister Mithilesh Kumar Thakur called the alleged
assault a “condemnable incident.”
“If a crime has been committed, the culprits will not be
spared,” he said on Saturday.
India has struggled for years to tackle high rates of
violence against women, with a number of high-profile rape cases involving
foreign visitors drawing international attention to the issue.
In 2018, A British woman was allegedly raped while walking
to her hotel in the western state of Goa, a popular tourist destination; two
years earlier, an American woman was allegedly drugged and raped by a group of
men in her five-star hotel room in New Delhi. And in 2013, six men were
sentenced to life in prison for the gang rape of a Swiss tourist.
According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, a total
of 31,516 rape cases were recorded in 2022, an average of 86 cases per day.
And experts warn that the number of cases recorded are just
a small fraction of what may be the real number, in a deeply patriarchal
country where shame and stigma surround rape victims and their families.
