The American tourist who was gang-raped on Tuesday by three men on her way back to her hotel in Manali has picked all three of her attackers out of a police line-up. They will be produced in court on Friday. The police have been quick to make the arrests, impounding a brick-coloured mini-truck, and finding forensic evidence to link all three men to the crime, but the unfolding horror of India’s latest rape case isn’t making tourists feel any safer.
Vinod Dhawan, police superintendent in Kullu, said the brave 30-year-old Californian is expected to be in court on Friday to identify the men in front of a local magistrate. If justice runs its course, the three men — Arjun, Lakki and Som Bahadur Tamang — should feel the sting of India’s tougher anti-rape laws. The new measures passed by India in March set a minimum 20-year prison sentence for gang-rape. At the very least, the authorities need to implement the new law.
“I tried to convince my friends to come on a yoga holiday to India but they are totally psyched. India has a beautiful spiritual side, but the headlines are awfully disconcerting,” yoga instructor Amelia Bradley told Firstpost.
Foreign
tourists to India, like this woman joining in Holi revelry, are
increasingly feeling unsafe – and with good reason. Reuters
Fire-engine-red Gray Line New York sightseeing buses sporting Incredible India! ads get more than their share of admiring glances from curious Americans, but they can’t sweep away the depressing headlines coming out of India. One thing is clear. The cancellations have started.
Sarah Burnham, a product designer was planning to leave this weekend for India. She was scheduled to present workshops in Delhi and Mumbai but cancelled her trip.
“I find travelling in India stressful because of unwanted attention. You have to keep looking over your shoulder and it can be exhausting,” said Burnham. “My India trip is on hold for now.”
In the last decade, India has gone from a place that relatively few Americans visited to one of the top international destinations for US travellers — ahead of other locales like Brazil, Switzerland and Greece
However, the attacks have hit tourism as the world sees India as complacent about an unthinkable level of violence against women. A survey by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry found that travel agencies lost 25 percent of foreign tourist business in the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2012. Bookings by women dropped 35 percent, the survey said following several rape attacks that have made global headlines.
“None of us expected things to change overnight, and for sexual violence to stop completely, but the fact that these cases appear to be increasing is certainly disappointing,” Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, a woman’s rights group, told USA Today.
The Manali gang-rape follows the rape of a 21-year-old Irish charity worker in Kolkata over the weekend. In the last three months, a series of attacks on foreign tourists have been reported in India, including that of a Swiss cyclist, who was gang-raped in Madhya Pradesh.
In March, a British woman traveling in northern India jumped form a third-floor hotel window, fearing a sexual assault, after the hotel’s owner tried to force his way into her room. A South Korean tourist was allegedly drugged and raped in Madhya Pradesh in January by the son of the owner of a hotel where she was staying.
India needs to continue the encouraging activism and mass protests which erupted in Delhi in December after the fatal gang-rape of the medical student to make the country safer for women.
Source: http://www.firstpost.com/world/hitchhikers-guide-to-india-pocketknife-stun-gun-pepper-spray-849937.html
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