Despite India’s recent initiatives to punish rapist more severely, sexual violence is still a very real problem in the country. The latest evidence of that came Tuesday, when a 51-year-old Danish women was reportedly gang-raped in New Delhi. Here’s the Associated Press with the disturbing details:
The woman asked the men for directions to her hotel, [Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said Wednesday]. They lured her to a secluded area where they raped her at knife-point, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. The woman managed to reach her hotel Tuesday evening and the owner called police. Police were questioning several other suspects.
“When she came, it was miserable,” said Amit Bahl, owner of the Amax hotel in the Paharganj area, which is popular with backpackers. The woman was crying and “not in good shape,” he said.
Police say they have arrested two men in connection with the attack.
Sexual violation is far too common in the country. In 2012, international attention turned to India when a 23-year-old woman was gang-raped and murdered on a moving bus. Lawmakers subsequently increased the sentence for rape from 10 to 20 years. According to National Crime Records Bureau data, on average a rape occurred every 21 minutes in India in 2012, Bloomberg reports. The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that an increase in reported sexual violence suggests that women are gaining the courage to come forward after being attacked.
