The woman in the Instagram video appeared shaken. Her face was swollen and bruised. Sitting beside her partner, she began recounting her ordeal. "Something happened to us that we wouldn't wish on anyone," she said in Spanish, with captions in English. "Seven men raped me, and they have beaten us and robbed us, although not many things [were taken] because what they wanted was to rape me." The woman said the assault on her and her partner—travel bloggers who had been documenting their trip for more than 200,000 followers on Instagram account—took place in a forest late Friday in eastern Jharkhand state's Dumka district where they were camping on their way to neighboring Nepal.
She said seven men held knives to their throats and took turns sexually assaulting her. The couple, described by the Washington Post as a Brazilian woman with a Spanish partner, were found by a police patrol van which took them to a hospital, where the woman told the doctor she had been raped. Police in Jharkhand confirmed the incident and arrested three men over the weekend, and on Monday, police said they were searching for four more suspects. An Instagram story posted by the couple Wednesday reads in part, "They have caught all the criminals, and there were 8 in total."
The AP reports the couple's video has since been deleted (though it was posted to X, where it has more than 200 million views), but the case has triggered a nationwide outcry over one of India's rampant problems: a decades-long struggle to curb rising sexual violence against women. Recent high-profile rape cases involving foreign visitors have drawn international attention to the issue. In 2022, a British tourist was raped in front of her partner in Goa. Earlier this year, an Indian-American woman said she was raped at a hotel in New Delhi.
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