The alleged gang rape of a tourist with Brazilian-Spanish dual nationality in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand has led to outrage.
The 28-year-old woman and her husband, who were on a motorbike tour, had stopped for the night in Dumki district when the alleged attack took place.
Police say that they have arrested four men and are searching for three more.
The identities of the men, who are also accused of beating the woman’s partner, have not been disclosed yet.
The couple had travelled to several parts of Asia on their motorbikes before arriving in India a few months ago.
Over the weekend, the woman posted a video on their Instagram page which has 234,000 followers.
In a separate video, the husband, who is Spanish, said: “My mouth is destroyed, but my partner is worse than me. They have hit me with the helmet several times, with a stone on the head. Thank goodness she was wearing the jacket and that stops the blows a little.”
The videos are no longer up on their page.
Dumka’s police superintendent Pitamber Singh Kherwar told reporters the couple flagged down a patrol van which took them to a local health centre for treatment.
The Brazilian embassy in India told the BBC that the woman and her husband “were victims of a serious criminal attack”. The embassy said it had contacted the woman and local authorities as well as the Spanish embassy, as the couple had used Spanish passports to enter India.
Conversations around rape and sexual violence became more prominent in India after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi led to huge protests and changes to the country’s rape laws. But tens of thousands of rapes are reported every year and activists say there is still a long way to go to tackle the issue.
Over the weekend, several women shared their stories of dealing with unwanted sexual attention while travelling in India.
The chief of India’s National Commission for Women, Rekha Sharma, also sparked criticism after she responded to a post from a US journalist who wrote that while India was one of his favourite places, “the level of sexual aggression” he witnessed while living in the country was “unlike anywhere else I have ever been”. He also gave a couple of examples of sexual assault faced by women he knew.
The response led to an outpouring of criticism from people on social media.
Several people have also left comments under the couple’s Instagram and YouTube videos, expressing solidarity and sympathy with them.
