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Indian police arrest men for gang rape of Swiss

Police in India say they have arrested a group of farmers in their 20s who confessed to gang-raping a Swiss cyclist, the latest in a series of shocking sex crimes in the country.

Indian police arrest men for gang rape of Swiss
Demonstrator protesting in New Delhi against gang rape crimes. Photo: Sajjad Hussain/AFP

The woman, reportedly from Lausanne, was on a biking holiday with her husband in central Madhya Pradesh state when she was attacked on Friday night while putting up a tent in a remote forested area.

Her husband was tied up as she was assaulted and the pair were also robbed, police said on Sunday.

Local officer M.S. Dhodee said five local men, illiterate small-scale farmers aged 20 to 25, had been arrested.

A sixth suspect, 19, was detained in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state and was being returned to the area.

Dhodee said they had recovered a laptop, some cash and a mobile phone stolen during the assault, which occurred as the couple were getting ready to spend the night ahead of a trip to the Taj Mahal in the town of Agra.

"They were passing by, noticed the couple putting up their tent and saw an opportunity to attack and rape the woman," Dhodee said.

"We found the laptop buried carefully under a pile of leaves, near some shrubs in the forest," he said.

"The mobile phone was recovered from the home of the mother-in-law of one of the men."

The five arrested men face charges of rape and robbery.

The sixth suspect is expected to face the same charges.

Their confessions to police will likely be inadmissible as evidence under Indian law, which rarely allows court prosecutors to cite such statements since they are seen as unreliable and involuntary.

The alleged rapists live in a village near the scene of the assault, which took place about 40 miles (70 kilometres) from the nearest town of Gwalior, which is about 180 miles south from New Delhi.

After the attack, the 39-year-old rape victim and her husband, a 30-year-old mechanic, stopped a motorcyclist who took them to the nearest police station, said SonntagsBlick, a Swiss German-language newspaper.

She underwent a medical examination at a local hospital before leaving for the Indian capital Delhi, police said.

The woman's mother-in-law told AFP in Switzerland that she had spoken to her son and the couple were recovering.

"This morning he phoned me to say they are in New Delhi and that they are both alright," she said in a phone interview from the family's farm in central Switzerland.

U.C. Shadangi, another local police officer, said that his force was in touch with the Swiss embassy who declined to comment to AFP about the case.

The couple arrived in Mumbai last month after visiting Iran and began a cycling holiday across India, making their way to Orchha, a popular foreign tourist haunt in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday, police said.

The Swiss foreign ministry in Bern released a statement on Saturday expressing deep shock at the "tragic incident".

The ministry had issued an advisory for Swiss nationals travelling in India last month, warning that sexual violence was on the rise across the country, and urging both women and men to travel in large groups and with local guides.

In January, a South Korean student holidaying in Madhya Pradesh said she had been raped and drugged by the son of the owner of the hotel where she stayed.

That incident came just six weeks after thousands took to India's streets in nationwide protests following the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi.

The victim, a physiotherapy student died from internal injuries after being savagely assaulted by six men.

One of her alleged attackers was found dead in his prison cell in New Delhi on Monday.

Police suspect he hanged himself, but his family says he was murdered.

The government has since opened an investigation into his death.

India's government is facing heavy pressure to step up efforts to protect women after the deadly gang-rape in the capital last December.

Under a new bill approved by India's cabinet last week, rapists face a minimum 20-year jail term and the death penalty if the victim dies from injuries or is left in a persistent vegetative state.

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INDIA

Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears

Spain will make all travellers arriving from India undergo a 10-day quarantine to prevent the potential spread of the Asian country’s coronavirus variant within the Spanish territory.

Travel: Spain imposes mandatory quarantine on arrivals from India over virus strain fears
Photo: JACK GUEZ/AFP

Spanish government spokesperson María Jesús Montero made the announcement on Tuesday, explaining that as there are no direct flights between Spain and India, it isn’t possible for Spain to adopt measures such as banning arrivals outright as other European countries have done.

The quarantine requirement for travellers arriving to Spain from India starts on May 1st 2021.

India joins a number of South American and African nations that are already on Spain’s quarantine list to stem the spread of the Brazilian and South African variants. 

According to the Spanish government’s website, those “coming from the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of South Africa, Republic of Botswana, Union of Comoros, Republic of Ghana, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, Republic of Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe, Republic of Peru and Republic of Colombia, must remain in quarantine for 10 days after their arrival in Spain, or for the duration of their stay if it is shorter than that. This period may end earlier, if on the seventh day the person is tested for acute infection with negative results.”

India is currently battling a record-breaking rise in Covid-19 infections that has overwhelmed hospitals and led to severe bed and oxygen shortages.

A key question is whether a new variant with potentially worrying mutations – B.1.617 – is behind what is currently the world’s fastest-growing outbreak, setting four records in a row for the highest daily coronavirus infections by one country, the latest on Sunday with 349,691 new cases.

The country has also been recording around 3,000 deaths per day from Covid-19. 

Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands have all imposed restrictions or travel bans on arrivals from India in recent days.

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“No cases of the Indian variant have been detected to date to my knowledge,” Spain’s Emergencies Coordinator Chief Fernando Simón told journalists on Monday. 

“The intel does not indicate that we have to worry about it,” he added, given that the UK variant now makes up 94 percent of all infections in Spain. 

“We cannot rule out that a case (of the Indian variant) may be detected”, Simón admitted, but “so far it is not a variant of concern, it is a variant of interest”.

Patients breath with the help of oxygen masks inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a Covid-19 coronavirus ward in New Delhi on April 27th, 2021. (Photo by Money SHARMA / AFP)

That is not a view shared by Amós José García Rojas , president of the Spanish Association of Vaccinations (AEV), who argues “we have to worry a lot” about the “chaos” that this new variant is leaving in the Asian country and why it could affect the spread of this strain of the virus.

“This new variant is fundamentally worrying because of what it is causing in India,” Rojas told medical publication Redacción Médica. 

“It shows that as there are territories where people are largely not vaccinated, there’s many people who are susceptible to the virus and it creates a breeding ground for the development of new variants”.

“We cannot vaccinate comprehensively in some countries and forget about other countries at the mercy of God.

“We have to worry about everyone because there is a risk that situations like the one seen in India will happen again. 

So far, the B.1.617 variant has been categorised by the World Health Organisation as a “variant of interest”.

Other variants detected in Brazil, South Africa and the UK have been categorised as “of concern”, because they are more transmissible, virulent or might reduce antibody efficacy.

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