A story all too common in India: A Danish woman visiting the capital of New Delhi claims she was brutally gang-raped by a group of men after getting lost in an area popular with tourists.
The 51-year-old says she approached a group of men and asked for directions back to her hotel room, but instead they led her to a secluded spot near a railway where they reportedly robbed her and repeatedly raped her at knife point. (Via CNN)
"She says by up to eight men. ... She then got a rickshaw to her hotel, where she confided, apparently, in another tourist there. And that tourist raised the alarm, and that's when the police were called." (Via CBC)
According to Indian police, the woman didn't have physical injuries that required medical attention, and she refused to be examined.
A deputy police commissioner said they initially detained 15 men who helped pinpoint the whereabouts of the suspects — whom police said Tuesday they plan to arrest soon. The woman has since left India. (Via The New York Times)
The director of a New Delhi women's advocacy goup, Centre for Social Research, told Bloomberg: "The message being sent to the world is that if you are a woman, you shouldn't come to India alone. ... It is a matter of great, great concern that this is happening, and we're not doing enough to stop these attacks."
This attack comes a little more than a year after the brutal gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in New Delhi. (Via Daily Mirror)
It caused international outrage, protests across India and demands for reform in the country — a country where a woman is raped every 20 minutes, according to India's National Crime Records Bureau.
And while there is growing awareness of violence against women in the local media, and police are reportedly taking cases more seriously, in the deeply traditional country, the issue of misogyny isn't one that will likely soon be solved.
A psychiatrist who has worked with hundreds of rape survivors in the area told The Washington Post: "In India, men rape because it's a manly thing to subjugate the weaker sex. Our culture puts so much emphasis on 'being a man,' which creates huge insecurities for men as they see women's status rising in society."
Just this year four other women were gang-raped in India, including a 16-year-old who died from her injuries on New Year's Eve. Of course, those are just the reported cases.
