Police in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand have arrested four men for the gang rape of a tourist with Brazilian-Spanish dual nationality.
The attack on the 28-year-old woman – a travel blogger and her 64-year-old Spanish partner took place on Friday night, as the couple were camping in Dumka district, while traveling by a motorbike across eastern India to Nepal.
The woman told reporters that she has no complaints against the people of India as she has safely travelled around 20,000 km across the country.
“People of India are nice. I don’t blame the people, but I blame the criminals. People of India have treated me very well, and were very kind to me,” she said.
She recounted the ordeal faced by her and her Spanish partner as they camped in a forest, around 300 km from state capital Ranchi.
“They raped me; they took turns while some watched and they stayed like that for about two hours,” the woman, who has joint Brazilian-Spanish nationality, told Spanish TV channel Antena 3 in the interview.
Struggling to fight back tears and showing bruises on their faces, the couple also said in an Instagram post that seven men held knives against their throats and took turns to sexually assault the woman, while beating and restraining her male partner.
“Something has happened to us that we would not wish on anyone. Seven men raped me. They have beaten us and robbed us, although not many things were taken because what they wanted was to rape me,” the woman said in Spanish, in a video posted on their Instagram page which has 234,000 followers.
In a separate video, the husband said: “My mouth is destroyed, but my partner is worse than me. They have hit me with the helmet several times, with a stone on the head. Thank goodness she was wearing the jacket and that stops the blows a little.”
The videos are no longer up on their page.
Dumka’s police superintendent Pitamber Singh Kherwar told reporters the couple flagged down a police patrol van at about 10.30pm.
“The patrolling team sensed that something had happened to them. Since they were speaking in Spanish, the police could not understand what they were saying. The policemen brought them to a local hospital,” Dumka superintendent of police Pitambar Singh Kherwar said. Doctors confirmed that the woman had been raped.
“We need to stand united in our commitment to end violence against women everywhere in the world,” the Spanish embassy in India posted on X (formerly Twitter)
The Brazilian embassy in India told the BBC that the woman and her husband “were victims of a serious criminal attack”. The embassy said it had contacted the woman and local authorities as well as the Spanish embassy, as the couple had used Spanish passports to enter India.
“The Spanish embassy said that it had offered all the assistance available, including psychological care, but that the victims had declined the offer as they were already being looked after by the Indian emergency services,” the Brazilian embassy said, adding that it would continue to “monitor all developments”.
India has introduced stringent laws against sexual offenders after the Nirbhaya case, the gang rape and death of a 22-year-old student in 2012.
Thousands of Indians took to the streets to protest and the case prompted the Indian government to expand the legal definition of rape and introduce the death penalty as a possible sentence for rapists.
(Picture Courtesy: AFP/Getty Images)
