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The Swiss woman (face covered), allegedly gang-raped by a group of eight men while touring by bicycle with her husband, is escorted by policewomen for a medical examination at a hospital at Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh on March 16, 2013. (Xinhua/Stringer)
Indian police have arrested five people in connection with the gangrape of a Swiss woman in the central state of Madhya Pradesh Saturday night, a police official said Monday.
"The five accused were arrested Sunday. They are in their mid- 20s. We have also recovered from them a laptop, battery, mobile phones and a torch robbed from the Swiss woman and her husband who were on a cycling tour of the state's Datia region when the incident took place in a forest area," he said on condition of anonymity.
The police are also questioning some 20 people detained in connection hope to arrest two more men involved in the gangrape," the official said, adding that those arrested have been charged with rape and dacoity.
The victim and her husband have left for the Indian capital but they may have to come to the state again for identification of the accused even though their statements were already recorded, he said.
Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh's Home Minister Uma Shankar Gupta said that "the incident was unfortunate", and suggested that foreign tourists should not tend to ignore the legal formality of informing the local police stations about their movements.
The gangrape of the 39-year-old Swiss woman came nearly three months after the brutal gangrape of a 23-year-old medical student by six men on a moving bus in the Indian capital sparked massive public outcry and forced the government to consider harsher punishment for rapists.
The Delhi University student died of her injuries at a Singapore hospital and five of the six accused are on trial facing rape and murder charges which carry a maximum of death penalty. The main accused committed suicide in his prison cell while the sixth accused is being tried as a minor.
