Japanese Woman Raped Repeatedly For A Month In India, Five Arrested

Police officials in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal have arrested five individuals after a 23-year-old Japanese student was raped repeatedly for nearly a month. According to BBC News, the woman was abducted on November 23 and was only able to escape in mid-December. The story of the brutal assault came to light after the woman decided to lodge a complaint earlier this week, reports Al Jazeera.

According to a senior police official from Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, the Japanese woman was approached by two men after she arrived in the city and checked into a hotel frequented by foreign tourists. The men, who are believed to be brothers, posed as tourist guides and gained her trust. The lady alleges that one of the men spoke fluent Japanese and told her that they would take her sight-seeing.

The men later took her to the beach-resort town of Digha where she was robbed of nearly $1000 and was later sexually assaulted. The men then took her to the Bodh Gaya, the holiest site of Buddhists, where she was handed over to three other men allegedly belonging to the same gang. It was there that the woman was kept in captivity for several weeks and was repeatedly assaulted sexually. By mid December, the woman somehow managed to escape from the clutches of her assailants and reached Varanasi from where she managed to reach Kolkata again. On December 26, she finally lodged a complaint against the five men via the Japanese consulate.

Meanwhile, police officials who started investigating the case intercepted mobile phone calls of the suspects and finally managed to arrest three people. They are on the lookout for the two other men who are reportedly proficient in Japanese. Al Jazeera, however, reports that all five men have been arrested.

India has been in the news since the infamous 2012 December rape case when a student was sexually assaulted and grievously injured inside a bus. Earlier in 2014, two sisters were raped and hung to death in northern India. In 2013, a Swiss cyclist was sexually assaulted in central India.

In spite of toughened laws enacted by the government, the number of rape cases being reported from India seems to be on the rise.

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]