OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
12:30 PM – Monday, March 4, 2024
Three male suspects were arrested after a tourist claimed that she and her husband had been attacked and gang-raped while camping in India.
On Sunday, three men were arrested for the alleged gang-rape of a female foreign tourist and the attack of her husband. The female victim explained her account of the purported incident on Instagram, where the couple has now collected a massive online following after broadcasting their motorcycle tour of Asia.
Pitambar Singh Kherwar, superintendent of the Dumka district police in the state of Jharkhand, stated that the couple, who had been riding a motorcycle from the state of West Bengal to the neighboring country of Nepal, were found late on Friday by police personnel on patrol.
Kherwar added that after the couple was brought to the hospital, the woman told doctors that she had been sexually assaulted by a number of men.
Authorities in eastern India are now searching for four additional suspects in the case.
“On March 1st, 2024, three criminals who raped a foreign woman and assaulted her husband under Hansdiha police station area were arrested and sent to judicial custody,” the Dumka Police stated on X (Twitter), according to a translation.
The woman, who is of Brazilian and Spanish descent, shared her story of the encounter on Instagram, where she and her partner had gained a substantial following while chronicling their motorcycle journey around Asia.
The event occurred in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, and police reported that three men had been taken into custody and that they were looking for four others.
Kherwar told reporters on Sunday that the couple appeared to have been beaten up when they were discovered by a roadside late on Friday.
“Since the victims were speaking in Spanish and English, our police officers could not properly understand what they were saying, but it looked like they were injured,” Kherwar stated.
Kherwar added that the couple, whose names have not yet been released, were transported to a local hospital where doctors found evidence that the women had been raped. According to Kherwar, the four additional males had been identified by detectives and will be arrested “very soon,” in addition to the three suspects who were taken into custody on Sunday.
“Our priority is to get them maximum punishment so it is never repeated,” he added, stating that the couple will receive compensation of up to $12,000.
In a post on X on Saturday, the Indian National Commission for Women stated that it has requested that the police charge the suspects with gang-rape, a crime that carries a minimum 20-year prison sentence.
“Something has happened to us that we would not wish on anyone,” the woman, who had bruises on her face, explained in tears in a clip posted on her Instagram page, which has nearly half a million followers.
“Seven men have raped me, they have beaten us and robbed us,” she said.
However, the video is no longer online.
The couple said in a different video that was uploaded on Sunday to their combined Instagram page, which has more than 250,000 followers, that “the police are doing everything possible to catch them. They already know who they are.”
“We ask that justice be done, not only for us but also for all the other women and girls who have gone through this,” the couple added.
According to their claims, the men continuously beat up the husband and sexually assaulted the woman. Their statements were recorded on the Spanish television network Antena 3. The woman also explained in the interview that they had chosen to camp in town since they could not find any motels to stay at overnight.
“They raped me, they took turns while some watched and they stayed like that for about two hours,” the woman said in the interview.
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