An Indian court convicted three men Friday over the February rape of a Japanese student who was sightseeing and sentenced them each to 20 years in prison, the public prosecutor said.
The assault on the 20-year-old woman in the western state of Rajasthan was the latest in a string of high-profile sexual assaults that have highlighted high levels of violence against women in the world’s second most populous country.
The woman told police that one of those convicted, Ajit Singh Choudhary, met her outside her hotel in Jaipur and offered to show her around on his motorbike. He later drugged her and raped her in a secluded area of the historic city.
The court in the Rajasthani capital convicted three of the nine defendants of gang rape, while another three were convicted of harboring an offender and sentenced to two years in prison.
“Six accused were found guilty and three (of these) have been jailed for 20 years, including the main accused,” Public Prosecutor Bhanwar Singh Chauhan said.
The court acquitted the remaining three defendants, citing lack of evidence.
Indian law states that if a woman is raped by one or more people “acting in furtherance of their common intention,” each can be deemed to have committed gang rape, meaning all nine were charged with the crime.
Police completed their investigations in March and the case was resolved unusually swiftly for India, where the legal system is notoriously slow.
The Japanese student left India for home in April after recording her statement in the case. The rape in February was the second of a Japanese visitor in less than a year.
In December last year, a 22-year-old research scholar from Japan was held captive and gang raped for nearly three weeks in a village near a Buddhist pilgrimage center in eastern Bihar state.
Police have arrested four suspects in that case, which also involved a tour guide who had offered to help the woman with sightseeing. She escaped from captivity on Dec. 26 and fled to the eastern city of Kolkata. The four are being tried on rape charges.
Both trials were fast-tracked, as all rape trials are now under the reforms introduced in 2013.
Sexual violence continues to be a major problem in India more than three years after the 2012 fatal gang rape of a student in New Delhi that unleashed public outrage about treatment of women in the country.
India introduced tougher laws against sex offenders in the wake of nationwide protests, including setting up hundreds of special courts to prosecute sexual violence cases.
More than 132,000 cases of sexual violence against women were reported in India in 2014, according to official data released by National Crimes Records Bureau.
The assault on the 20-year-old woman in the western state of Rajasthan was the latest in a string of high-profile sexual assaults that have highlighted high levels of violence against women in the world’s second most populous country.
The woman told police that one of those convicted, Ajit Singh Choudhary, met her outside her hotel in Jaipur and offered to show her around on his motorbike. He later drugged her and raped her in a secluded area of the historic city.
The court in the Rajasthani capital convicted three of the nine defendants of gang rape, while another three were convicted of harboring an offender and sentenced to two years in prison.
“Six accused were found guilty and three (of these) have been jailed for 20 years, including the main accused,” Public Prosecutor Bhanwar Singh Chauhan said.
The court acquitted the remaining three defendants, citing lack of evidence.
Indian law states that if a woman is raped by one or more people “acting in furtherance of their common intention,” each can be deemed to have committed gang rape, meaning all nine were charged with the crime.
Police completed their investigations in March and the case was resolved unusually swiftly for India, where the legal system is notoriously slow.
The Japanese student left India for home in April after recording her statement in the case. The rape in February was the second of a Japanese visitor in less than a year.
In December last year, a 22-year-old research scholar from Japan was held captive and gang raped for nearly three weeks in a village near a Buddhist pilgrimage center in eastern Bihar state.
Police have arrested four suspects in that case, which also involved a tour guide who had offered to help the woman with sightseeing. She escaped from captivity on Dec. 26 and fled to the eastern city of Kolkata. The four are being tried on rape charges.
Both trials were fast-tracked, as all rape trials are now under the reforms introduced in 2013.
Sexual violence continues to be a major problem in India more than three years after the 2012 fatal gang rape of a student in New Delhi that unleashed public outrage about treatment of women in the country.
India introduced tougher laws against sex offenders in the wake of nationwide protests, including setting up hundreds of special courts to prosecute sexual violence cases.
More than 132,000 cases of sexual violence against women were reported in India in 2014, according to official data released by National Crimes Records Bureau.