An American tourist has told police she was gang-raped in northern India earlier this week, officials in the town of Dharamsala have said.



The 46-year-old Californian woman arrived in India about a month ago and had travelled alone to Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama and a popular tourist destination 300 miles north of the capital, Delhi.

She had described walking through the town’s main market when two men grabbed hold of her. She then passed out but on regaining consciousness said she became aware that she had been raped by the pair. The alleged attack is the latest in a series that have targeted foreign women travelling in India, which is suffering a wave of sexual violence.



“She says that after waking up she realised that she had been assaulted ... and decided to approach us. We have registered a case of rape and are investigating,” Abishek Dullar, a police superintendent in Dharamsala, told the AFP news agency.

Earlier this month, three men were jailed for the rape of a 19-year-old Japanese woman in the city of Jaipur, in the western state of Rajasthan. They included a guide who had befriended the tourist then drugged and raped her.

Five men are currently facing trial for the rape of another Japanese tourist in the east of India earlier this year, one of several such cases reported to police in Kolkata. Six men are currently on trial accused of the gang-rape of a Danish tourist in Delhi last year.

Though officials stress that such cases are infrequent and that millions of visitors travel through India every year, the growing problem has hit tourism. The number of foreign tourists arriving in the country dropped by 25% during the first three months of 2013, largely because of fears about the risk of sexual assault, according to an industry survey.

The number of tourists has risen since but officials say incidents have an immediate impact, particularly in Delhi, a blackspot. Only a tiny minority of such crimes involve foreigners.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, incidents of rape in India have gone up tenfold in the past 40 years. From 1971 to 2012, recorded cases rose from just under 2,500 to almost 25,000. Activists say significantly fewer rapes are reported than in western nations due to the social stigma attached to being a rape victim in India.

More than 132,000 cases of sexual violence against women were reported in the country of 1.3 billion in 2014, according to official data.

The high-profile rape and murder of a 23 year old physiotherapist in Delhi in December 2012 prompted a fierce debate over the causes of the wave of violence. Suggestions ranged from too much fast-food and western influences to men influenced by ingrained cultural traditions resisting growing demands for independence from women.

The incident led to new legislation, introducing stiffer punishments for such crimes. Fast-track courts were also introduced and gender sensitisation courses organised for policemen.

The effects on the ground appear to be limited, however. Every week India’s media describe attacks on women across the country, often involving several men and frequently resulting in the death of the victim.

At the weekend, police in the northern Uttar Pradesh state arrested two men accused of shooting dead women whom they had raped to stop them testifying.

Shortly after winning a landslide election victory in May last year, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, called for zero tolerance of violence towards women.