Indian police arrest truck driver for raping American tourist in 2015

NEW DELHI, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- Police in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh Saturday arrested a man accused of raping a 24-year-old American woman two years back.

"Baldev Singh, a 32-year-old truck driver, was arrested from the neighboring northern Indian state of Punjab's Ludhiana city Friday. He was produced in a court the same day and remanded in police custody for interrogation," police officer Anjitha Chepyala told the media.

Police said Singh drove an autorickshaw in 2015 and raped the American tourist along with an accomplice, when she visited Chandigarh in November that year.

"The American national did not lodge a police complaint at the time and left the country as her visa was about to expire, but wrote an email to a top police official after she got back to France where she was working," another police official said.

"A probe soon began and after two years, we finally managed to nab the main accused. A manhunt is now on for the other accused in the case, who is on the run," he added.

Rapes of foreigners are not uncommon in India. In 2016, an Indian court sentenced five men to life imprisonment for the gangrape of a 52-year-old Danish tourist in Delhi in 2014. She approached the men after losing her way back to her hotel near New Delhi railway station.

Despite the Indian government bringing in stricter laws against sexual assaults after the 2012 brutal and fatal gangrape of a 23-year-old medical student by six men on a moving bus in the national capital, such incidents continue to be reported across the country. Enditem