A Japanese tourist was raped, possibly after being drugged, police said on Monday, the latest in a series of sexual attacks on women.
The 20-year-old woman was allegedly raped by a youth who had introduced him as a "tourist guide" and took her around the Pink City on his motorbike, said Rajasthan inspector general of police (Jaipur range) Dharam Chand Jain.
The IGP said that the victim had arrived in Jaipur on Sunday and checked into a hotel near the Jal Mahal, an 18th century palace in the middle of Man Sagar Lake in the capital city. Jain quoted the woman as saying that she was given food laced with drugs before being attacked by the accused, believed to be in his mid-twenties.
He said that the accused left the woman at a desolate place on the outskirts of the city where local residents rushed to her rescue, drawn by her cries for help.
The woman reported the rape to police around 2 am, police sources said. Jain said the woman has undergone a medical examination and was helping police try to identify her attacker.
The incident took place barely a few days after a 28-year-old Nepalese woman was gangraped and murdered in neighbouring Haryana's Rohtak township, leaving the country numb by the sheer viciousness of the attackers.
Last week, an 8-year-old girl was raped and murdered on the outskirts of Bengaluru, allegedly by a construction worker who was later arrested.
Jaipur, around 265 km from Delhi, is famous for its grand palaces and forts, most of them in dusty-pink sandstone. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics showed 3,285 rapes in 2013 in Rajasthan out of 33,707 in the country.
Rajasthan has a flourishing tourism industry and is generally considered a safe place for visitors despite earlier instances of sexual attacks on foreigners.
The tourism sector feared that the incident could deal a blow to the industry as Britain and France have already revised their travel advisories for India in January, warning visitors about the risk of sexual attacks, after two cases of foreigners being raped.
Jaipur, around 265 km from Delhi, is famous for its grand palaces and forts, most of them in dusty-pink sandstone. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics showed 3,285 rapes in 2013 in Rajasthan out of 33,707 in the country.
Rajasthan has a flourishing tourism industry and is generally considered a safe place for visitors despite earlier instances of sexual attacks on foreigners.
The tourism sector feared that the incident could deal a blow to the industry as Britain and France have already revised their travel advisories for India in January, warning visitors about the risk of sexual attacks, after two cases of foreigners being raped.
In December, a 22-year-old research scholar from Japan was allegedly held captive and gang-raped for nearly three weeks in a village near the Buddhist shrine of Bodh Gaya in Bihar
Police later arrested several suspects in that case, which also involved a tourist guide who had offered to help the woman with sightseeing.
Last January, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was robbed and gang-raped at knifepoint in Delhi in a case that also grabbed national and international headlines.
Earlier in 2013, a Swiss woman holidaying in Madhya Pradesh was robbed and raped by five men, all of whom were later jailed for life.
"After such incidents, tourism is the first casualty," AFP quoted Gour Kanjilal, executive director of the Indian Association of Tour Operators, as saying.
"We have been issuing instructions to tourists not to accept help or food from strangers," he added.
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