Delhi Police file case two months after rape of US woman

A US citizen has claimed that she was gang-raped and tortured for 48 hours in a five-star hotel, where five men urinated upon her, assaulted her with bottles and a broom and banged her head to the toilet seat. She claims the men said they wanted to teach her a lesson for travelling to India alone.

Left with no option, she lay still. "They thought I was dead and started talking about disposing my body. They wrapped me in a blanket and took me to the hallway from my room. I somehow got rid of the blanket and reached the hotel lobby," said the victim.

The Delhi Police finally registered a case on Saturday, two months after the incident. A US-based NGO, Americans Overseas Domestic Violence Crisis Centre, wrote to the Delhi Police chief giving details of the woman's allegations on October 5. The police replied on October 17, acknowledging the complaint.

The case was finally registered when the victim, through her Delhi-based lawyer, approached the police again. "There was no further correspondence from the Delhi Police after the last mail on October 17," she has stated.

DNA contacted Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma and Chief PRO Taj Hasan, but they did not respond. However, Additional DCP, New Delhi, RP Meena, said: "After receiving the complaint at the police station, we tried to contact her but could not locate her number. The case required police officers' direct interaction with the victim. After the intervention of the attorney of the victim and interactions with them, a case was registered the same day."

According to the victim, "He (one of the alleged rapists) told me he had done this to women from Australia and Japan. His phone has a folder with each foreign tourist's name." Despite narrating this to the police, they did not act, she said.

She has named a hotel employee, his brother, tour bus driver, his assistant and the tour guide in her complaint.

The victim arrived in the capital on April 8, 2016, and reached her hotel in Connaught Place by 5.30 pm. She was accompanied by another couple and a woman, who were also part of the tour.

She said that the hotel employee escorted her to the room and left a bottle of water in the room. "I drank the water and immediately felt sleepy. I think there was something in the water that made me sleepy." She said that the five men took turns and raped her. "I ran to the bathroom and locked myself. I opened the door after sometime and they were still there. One of them banged my head on the toilet bowl and urinated on me. He said he will set me on fire and pulled a lighter out of his pocket," she said.

She also fears that her torture was being filmed. The victim said that employees at the hotel lobby asked her if anything was wrong or if she had been raped. The hotel employees also handed over a towel to her as she was just in her shirt. The employees thought that she was drunk and was escorted to her room, she said.

She woke up the next morning and went for breakfast where a hotel employee forced her to have tea laced with sedatives. Despite him forcing her to go to the room, she proceeded to the tour bus with her female companion. "We went to our first tourist place and the tour guide took me aside. When I tried running away, he showed me his mobile phone with files (each file with a woman's name). He said he had been doing this with other women for the last seven years. He had my pictures and video too. He played the video but did not show me, I recognised it was me because of my voice," she said.

After reaching the hotel room, she was sexually assualted again, she claimed.