NEW DELHI: A taxi driver accused of raping and threatening a Japanese vacationer near a prominent Indian tourist destination has been arrested, police said Saturday.
The 30-year-old visitor said she had flagged down the driver’s cab on Wednesday in Manali, a resort town in the Himalayan foothills popular with foreign travelers, to travel to a neighboring town.
She was instead taken to an isolated location in a nearby forest and sexually assaulted in the driver’s car, police said.
“She said she surrendered to him after the driver told her (that) if she resisted the rape attempt, he would call his friends to gang-rape her,” regional police chief Shalini Agnihotri told AFP.
The woman filed a complaint with police after she was dropped at a nearby town by the accused, Agnihotri said, adding that a medical test confirmed she had been raped.
The driver, a Manali resident, was arrested by police on Friday based on the description given by the woman, who confirmed his identity after he was taken into custody.
India has a grim record of sexual violence, with nearly 40,000 rape cases reported countrywide in 2016.
Campaigners say the true figure is likely to be much higher given the social stigma around victims of sexual crimes.
Several foreign tourists have been sexually assaulted in Manali in recent years.
A 25-year-old Israeli woman was hospitalized in 2016 after she was raped by two men in the town, while in 2013 an American woman was raped by three men after accepting a ride in their truck.
Indian taxi driver arrested over Japanese tourist rape
Indian taxi driver arrested over Japanese tourist rape
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
