Israeli woman says gang-raped in Indian resort town

Rohtak, India: In this photograph taken on July 21, 2016, Rohtak police superintendent Rakesh Arya talks to AFP in his office about the case of gang rape of a woman in the city of Rohtak. A low-caste Indian student who survived a gang rape when she was 17 only to be raped again, allegedly by men who were awaiting trial for the first attack, said July 22 she feared she and her family would never be safe again. AFP/Chandan Khanna

July 25, 2016
SHIMLA, India (AFP) - A 25-year-old Israeli woman has allegedly been raped by two men in the popular northern Indian Himalayan resort town of Manali, senior local police officers said on Monday.

The woman has told police she was attacked early Sunday morning after flagging down what she thought was a taxi and asking for a lift to a nearby town, superintendent Padam Chand said.

"There were six people in the car and two of the occupants raped her she alleged," Chand told AFP, and then they fled.

The woman had been trying to reunite with friends who had already left for the nearby town of Keylong after they all arrived in Manali a few days earlier.

Police were examining CCTV footage from cameras installed on the streets on Manali, popular with holidaying foreigners and Indians, in the hope of identifying the suspects.

"We are examining CCTV footage and hope to nab the culprits. The Israeli embassy has been informed," Chand said.

The woman was being treated in hospital after she reported the attack, which took place at about 3am, at the Manali police station later on Sunday.

"She is being shifted today to a bigger hospital in Mandi town to carry out a proper medical examination," Gandhi Ram, another police officer in Manali, said by phone.

India hiked punishments for rapists as part of an overhaul of sexual assault laws in the wake of a fatal gang-rape in 2012 that shone a global spotlight on frightening levels of violence against women in India.

But rape and sexual assault remain commonplace, with incidents hitting the headlines on an almost daily basis.

An American woman was raped in Manali in 2013 by three men when she took a ride with them in a truck. In 2012 an Australian woman was also raped in the same area, located in the picturesque Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh state.