Indian police have arrested three men and are searching for four others accused of attacking tourists and gang-raping a woman, authorities and a couple said.
Pitamber Singh Kirwar, a police inspector in Dumka in eastern India, told reporters on Saturday that police found the couple, who are Spanish citizens, at around 11 p.m. local time (1730 GMT) on Friday on the side of the road, and they appeared to have been beaten.
He did not provide details about the crime or the identity of the victims, adding that the two people reported to the authorities that they had been assaulted in an incident involving seven men.
The couple, who identified themselves as Vicente and Fernanda, told the Spanish television channel Antena 3, in a video interview on Saturday, that the two men raped Fernanda and beat Vicente repeatedly.
The couple said they camped near the site where they were attacked because they were unable to find hotels nearby.
Fernanda, who holds dual Brazilian and Spanish citizenship, said in the interview, “They raped me, and they took turns while others were watching me, and they remained like that for about two hours.”
At the beginning of the week, the couple posted a video clip describing what happened on their joint Instagram account, where they posted pictures of their trips around the world on a motorcycle to nearly 200,000 followers. But the video clip is no longer available.
In a new video clip, Vicente and Fernanda, who appeared with bruises on her face, thanked their followers for the support.
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday that it would send staff to the region and that it was in contact with the authorities, while its Brazilian counterpart said that it had requested to contact the Brazilian citizen through its embassy in New Delhi and that it was available to provide all possible assistance.
A police inspector in Dumka said on Saturday that one of the detainees had given the authorities the names of other people involved.
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