A Swiss tourist has been gang-raped and a senior Indian executive of an international company kidnapped in the latest crimes to underline the lawlessness afflicting parts of India.
The Swiss tourist, in her late thirties, was on a cycling trip across India with a male companion. The two were attacked on Friday night after they had camped in a wooded area in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, the police said.
A group of men beat up the couple and stole a mobile phone, a laptop computer and cash. Seven or eight of them raped the woman, who was later taken to hospital in Gwalior. Police searched the woods and said they had arrested 13 people.
About an hour earlier on Friday, in Noida, near Delhi, armed men kidnapped Rathin Basu, managing director of Alstom T&D India, the electricity transmission business of France’s Alstom, and held him along with his driver in a house in Meerut.
According to Indian newspaper reports, he was rescued from his kidnappers in the early hours of Saturday morning after police worked out his location from his mobile telephone, which remained switched on, and sent a force of 150 officers to find him. The motive of the kidnapping was not immediately known.
“It was a harrowing time, and I am glad to be back,” Mr Basu told the Times of India.
Crime – especially rape and other crimes against women – has emerged as a hot political issue among middle-class Indian voters following the brutal gang-rape and assault last year of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student.
The student died from her injuries in December after a two-week struggle to survive. The crime in New Delhi, committed on a bus in the presence of her boyfriend after the two had watched a film at an upmarket shopping mall, prompted big demonstrations in the capital.
In a further blow to the reputation of India’s justice system, Ram Singh, the 33-year-old bus driver who was the alleged ringleader in attack, was found hanged in his high-security jail cell in New Delhi a week ago as the trial continued.
Crimes against business owners and executives, such as the abortive kidnapping of Mr Basu, are not uncommon in India.
In July last year, the human resources manager of Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar car factory was killed and 96 people injured when rioting workers went on the rampage, wielding iron rods and car parts.
And it was in the industrial area of Noida that Lalit Kishore Chaudhary, local chief executive of Italy’s Graziano Trasmissioni India, was killed in 2008. His skull was smashed with a hammer after an angry crowd, probably including workers who had been dismissed, broke into the company’s factory.
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The Swiss tourist, in her late thirties, was on a cycling trip across India with a male companion. The two were attacked on Friday night after they had camped in a wooded area in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, the police said.
A group of men beat up the couple and stole a mobile phone, a laptop computer and cash. Seven or eight of them raped the woman, who was later taken to hospital in Gwalior. Police searched the woods and said they had arrested 13 people.
About an hour earlier on Friday, in Noida, near Delhi, armed men kidnapped Rathin Basu, managing director of Alstom T&D India, the electricity transmission business of France’s Alstom, and held him along with his driver in a house in Meerut.
According to Indian newspaper reports, he was rescued from his kidnappers in the early hours of Saturday morning after police worked out his location from his mobile telephone, which remained switched on, and sent a force of 150 officers to find him. The motive of the kidnapping was not immediately known.
“It was a harrowing time, and I am glad to be back,” Mr Basu told the Times of India.
Crime – especially rape and other crimes against women – has emerged as a hot political issue among middle-class Indian voters following the brutal gang-rape and assault last year of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student.
The student died from her injuries in December after a two-week struggle to survive. The crime in New Delhi, committed on a bus in the presence of her boyfriend after the two had watched a film at an upmarket shopping mall, prompted big demonstrations in the capital.
In a further blow to the reputation of India’s justice system, Ram Singh, the 33-year-old bus driver who was the alleged ringleader in attack, was found hanged in his high-security jail cell in New Delhi a week ago as the trial continued.
Crimes against business owners and executives, such as the abortive kidnapping of Mr Basu, are not uncommon in India.
In July last year, the human resources manager of Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar car factory was killed and 96 people injured when rioting workers went on the rampage, wielding iron rods and car parts.
And it was in the industrial area of Noida that Lalit Kishore Chaudhary, local chief executive of Italy’s Graziano Trasmissioni India, was killed in 2008. His skull was smashed with a hammer after an angry crowd, probably including workers who had been dismissed, broke into the company’s factory.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.