Five men have been arrested in India charged with kidnapping and repeatedly raping a Japanese student.<\/p>\n
Police in the eastern city of Calcutta say the assaults took place over a period of more than a month from 23 November and in at least two locations.<\/p>\n
They say an organised gang is suspected of targeting single women tourists.<\/p>\n
Increasing numbers of rape cases are being reported and highlighted in India, prompting widespread outrage.<\/p>\n
Pallav Kanti Ghosh, a Calcutta police commissioner, told BBC Hindi that two of the men – said to be brothers – approached the 23-year-old victim as tourist guides after she arrived in the city and checked into a hotel in an area popular with foreign tourists.<\/p>\n
Trafficked at Buddhist holy site<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n “One of the men spoke very fluent Japanese,” he said.<\/p>\n “They said: ‘We are guides and want to take you sight-seeing.’<\/p>\n “They took her to Digha [a beach resort in West Bengal state] on 23 November. There they sexually assaulted her and robbed her of 76,000 rupees [\u00a31,200] using her ATM card.”<\/p>\n She was then taken to Bodh Gaya, the holiest site of Buddhism and a major pilgrimage and tourist centre.<\/p>\n “There, the men handed her over to other gang members,” Mr Ghosh said.<\/p>\n The woman was held captive for several weeks and the assaults continued, he said.<\/p>\n In late December she managed to reach the city of Varanasi from where she travelled to Calcutta, lodging a complaint via the Japanese consulate on 26 December.<\/p>\n Mr Ghosh said three of the men were arrested near Bodh Gaya and two in Calcutta. The Hindustan Times newspaper said some were held after their mobile phone calls were intercepted.<\/p>\n He said police were searching for other members of what he called an organised gang, several of whom are reportedly proficient in Japanese.<\/p>\n Sexual violence in India has been in the spotlight since a student was fatally gang-raped on a bus in Delhi two years ago.<\/p>\n That and other cases have prompted a domestic and international outcry.<\/p>\n Other foreign women targeted by gang-rapists include a Swiss cyclist assaulted in central India in 2013 and a Danish tourist attacked in Delhi a year ago.<\/p>\n Rape laws have been toughened in response to the crimes but correspondents say this has failed to act as a deterrent.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five men have been arrested in India charged with kidnapping and repeatedly raping a Japanese student. Police in the eastern city of Calcutta say the assaults took place over a period of more than a month from 23 November and in at least two locations. They say an organised gang is suspected of targeting single […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":79159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"class_list":["post-79158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}