Five arrested after Japanese tourist is gang-raped by tour guides in India
Five men have been arrested for the alleged gang-rape of a Japanese tourist who was held as a sex slave near a famous Buddhist shrine in India.
The 22-year-old student was befriended by three local men in Kolkata, West Bengal, shortly after she arrived on 20 November, a top police officer told AFP.
One of the men spoke Japanese and managed to persuade her to withdraw around $1,200 in cash before travelling with her to the Bodh Gaya shrine in the state of Bihar.
The woman was handed over to two brothers who allegedly locked her in an underground room and repeatedly raped her for a month.
The men were working as tour guides and were arrested on Friday and appeared in court on Saturday.
Pallav Kanti Ghosh, a Calcutta police commissioner, told the BBC that she was approached by the three men soon after checking into a hotel in an area popular with tourists.
"One of the men spoke very fluent Japanese," he said.
"They said: 'We are guides and want to take you sight-seeing.'
"They took her to Digha on 23 November. There they sexually assaulted her and robbed her of 76,000 rupees [$1,200] using her ATM card."
The woman managed to escape and reached the city of Varanasi, where she met some Japanese tourists who helped her.
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