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| Female tourists shun India after rape attack | | | agencies
NEW DELHI, Mar 31: Women travelers have turned their back on India after the notorious gang rape and murder of a Delhi student in December highlighted the scale of sexual violence in the country.
A survey by Indian chambers of commerce found a 35 per cent decline in the numbers of female foreign tourists since the 23 year girl was raped and mutilated by six men on a Delhi bus before she was dumped on the road and left to die.
The attack provoked protests throughout India and forced the government to introduce new tougher sentences for sexual assaults on women and fast track courts to reassure women it was concerned for their safety. It also led India’s media to give greater prominence to reporting rape and sexual assault cases amid wider soul searching about the attitude of India’s men and families to women.
But according to the survey of Indian tourist businesses by Assocham, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, thousands of men and women planning holidays in India are no longer prepared to take the risk.
Two brutal attacks on foreign visitors in India in the last two weeks have reinforced the fear. The trial of six men accused of gang-raping a Swiss woman who was attacked in front of her husband in Madhya Pradesh as they camped overnight in a forest during a cross country cycle holiday, began on Saturday. The men held her at gun-point and restrained her husband back as they each raped her.
A British woman was attacked in her hotel room in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, one of India’s most popular tourist destinations, by the hotel manager.
He tried to force his way into her room at 3.45 am in the morning to give her a shower and an oil message. The woman, 32 year old dental hygienist Jessica Davies from south-east London jumped from her second floor room window to escape. |
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