Five men held over gang-rape of Japanese woman

Police in India have arrested two brothers and three other men in connection with the alleged kidnapping and gang-rape of a 23 year-old Japanese tourist over three weeks near a pilgrimage site, officials have said.

The arrests were made after the alleged victim filed a criminal complaint through the Japanese consulate in the eastern city of Kolkata.

The 22-year-old said she was befriended by three local men who spoke Japanese before being taken to the seaside resort of Digha and held hostage at gunpoint in a secluded basement close to Bodh Gaya in the east of India, officials said.

There, two more men are alleged to have joined them and raped her.

“When her health condition deteriorated due to repeated rape and poor living conditions, she was brought to Gaya [town] for medical treatment on 20 December,” a police officer who is part of the investigation told Agence France-Presse.

But the woman escaped and got in touch with other Japanese tourists who helped her contact their country’s consulate in the nearby city of Kolkata, the officer said.

Tour guides Sajid Khan, 32, and his brother Jawed, 25, were arrested on Friday, the deputy superintendent Alok Kumar Singh said.

“We have arrested the duo for confining and raping the Japanese student,” Singh told AFP.

On Sunday Kolkata joint police commissioner Pallab Kanti Ghosh said three other men had been arrested on suspicion of extorting money from the victim and then handing her over to the alleged rapists.

Indian officials have come under intense scrutiny over the country’s efforts to curb violence against women, particularly after international outcry following the fatal gang rape of a medical student in Delhi in 2012. Since then, several attacks on foreign women have been reported, leading to a dip in tourist numbers in the country.

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

In 2013, a Swiss cyclist holidaying in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh was robbed and gang raped by five men, all of whom were later sentenced to life in prison.