Police:
Swiss tourist gang-raped in India
From Sumnima Udas, CNN
Indian activists in New
Delhi protest in February for harsher punishments
and quicker trials in rape cases.
(CNN) -- Police are investigating the
gang-rape of a tourist in central India, the latest black eye for
the country over violence against women.
A Swiss couple was camping near a forest in India's Datia
district when a group of men beat the husband and raped his wife, the
district's deputy superintendent of police, R.S. Prajapati, told CNN. There
were between five and seven attackers, he said.
The couple arrived in Mumbai on February 3 and were on a
cycling tour across the country, said D.K. Arya, deputy inspector general of
police.
The attackers stole a laptop, 10,000 rupees (US $185) and a
mobile phone, he said. The victims went to police and the woman was
hospitalized and later released.
Twenty people have been detained for questioning, Arya said.
The couple is staying at a guesthouse in the Datia district
while the investigation unfolds, he said.
The Swiss ambassador to India, Linus von Castelmur, has
spoken with the couple and offered any support they will need.
"Their health and treatment is the priority of the
moment," the ambassador said in a statement. "The embassy has also
been in touch with the local authorities and has requested for swift
investigation and for justice to be done."
The attack comes at a time in India when there are calls for
stricter laws on sexual assault and changes in cultural attitudes toward
women.
In December a 23-year-old woman was gang-raped on a New Dehli
bus, spurring protests in India,
where most women have stories of sexual harassment and abuse on public
transportation or on the streets, according to the Indian Council on Global
Relations. That woman later died in a Singapore hospital.
A panel appointed by India's home affairs minister as a result
of the case criticized Indian attitudes toward sexual assault and called for
policy changes, including creating an offense of gang-rape punishable by at
least 20 years in prison, making it a crime for police to fail to investigate
sexual assault complaints and making it illegal to consider character or
previous sexual experience of the victim at a criminal trial.
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