Three Indian men were charged and police are still looking for four other suspects in connection to the March 1 gang rape of a Spanish tourist who was on a motorcycle tour with her husband, CBS News reported.
The Spanish couple were camping in the Dumka district of Jharkhand state in eastern India when seven men brutally assaulted the woman.
Pitamber Singh Kherwar, a senior police official in the district told AFP that the police had formed a task force to hunt down the four suspects still at large.
The three men apprehended appeared in court on March 3 and were later remanded into custody.
The Spanish couple told Antena 3 TV in Spain that the suspects repeatedly beat the husband and raped the wife.
According to the Associated Press, the couple, who were documenting their trip on Instagram, posted a now-deleted video after the attack. The woman, whose face was bruised and swollen, and her husband recounted the incident, saying they were in their tent when the men assaulted them. The husband said they were held at knifepoint as the seven men assaulted his wife.
The couple was later found by a police patrol which transported them to a hospital.
Kherwar told India’s PTI news agency last Monday that a forensic team was scouring the crime scene for evidence as a team of officers hunted for the other suspects. He said police were “constantly raiding places” and expected to arrest the others soon.
“We have to ensure strict punishment,” he said.
According to National Crime Records Bureau data, on average, there were nearly 90 rapes reported each day in India in 2022. Police recorded a total of 31,516 rapes that year, a 20 percent jump from 2021.
In 2022, 11 men were arrested for the brutal gang rape of a woman in Dehli who was tortured and paraded through the streets. That same year, a police officer was accused of raping a 13-year-old who came to the police station to report that she was gang-raped.
