Outrage in India over gang rape and murder

Police in India’s northern Haryana state have arrested eight men for kidnapping, gang-raping and murdering a 28-year-old mentally disabled Nepali woman, in a case that has caused widespread public outrage.

Police said they were on the lookout for a ninth man involved in the barbaric rape in Rohtak district, a largely farming area some 80km north of New Delhi.

The victim’s mutilated body was recovered from Akbarpur village near Rohtak on February 4th, three days after she was reported missing by her sister.

“I have never seen such a horrific case in 30 years,” said Dr SK Dattarwal, head of the forensic team that conducted the postmortem on the woman.

“The injuries suggest she was hit on the head with a heavy object, became partly unconscious and was then gang-raped and abandoned in a field”, he said.

Police said stones, sticks, blades and condoms were found inside the woman.

According to her sister, the victim had come from Nepal three months earlier, seeking treatment for depression at a local hospital in Rohtak.

She went missing last week and three days later her body was recovered, reviving memories of the fatal gang rape of an Indian medical student in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012.

That resulted in stricter laws against rape and sexual crimes and efforts were made to change attitudes towards women in India’s deeply patriarchal society. However, the number of sex crimes across the country has continued to rise exponentially.

According to the National Crime Record Bureau, 92 women on average are raped daily across India; Delhi, with 1,636 cases recorded, had the highest number of such crimes among all Indian cities last year.

Meanwhile, police said that a 20-year-old Japanese woman had accused her local tourist guide of drugging and then raping her in the tourist city of Jaipur in western India. She claimed the guide had offered to show her around Jaipur at the weekend, before drugging and raping her in a nearby remote village later in the evening.

The guide fled after the girl’s screams were heard by villagers, who rushed to help her. The guide is being sought by police.

This case is the latest in a string of high-profile sex attacks against tourists.

Last month, six men from the eastern city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) were charged with kidnapping and gang-raping another 22-year-old Japanese tourist. The woman was allegedly held hostage for a month after travelling to the Buddhist shrine of Bodh Gaya in nearby Bihar state.

Earlier in January, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was robbed and gang-raped at knifepoint in Delhi.

And in 2013, a Swiss cyclist holidaying in the central Madhya Pradesh state was robbed and raped by five men, all of whom were later jailed for life.

Last year Britain and France revised their travel advisories for India, warning women against the high incidence of sexual attacks across the country.