Woman gang-raped in a school where she was quarantined
An Indian woman, believed to be in her forties, was allegedly raped in a school where she had been quarantined for the night amid the country’s nationwide lockdown, a police official revealed.
Dailymail reported that the incident occurred on March 23 in a desert state of Rajasthan when the victim had sought shelter at a police station after losing her way to her native village.
In the absence of a quarantine centre, local police housed her for the night in a school building, where the rape incident was believed to have occurred.
A Deputy Superintendent of police in Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan, Parth Sharma, told Reuters that “The three local men who raped the woman inside the school on April 23 have been arrested and sent to jail.”
DSP Sharma said the woman had been sent to a local quarantine facility to get tested for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
“We don’t know how long she was on her own for, and who she came into contact with, and her test results are not yet known,” he said.
He also disclosed that a junior official had been suspended for negligence following the rape incident.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had imposed a 21-day lockdown on March 25 to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
His announcement came after several Indian states had introduced measures of their own, such as travel restrictions and the closure of non-essential services to contain the virus.
India had issued a ban on international arrivals and grounded domestic flights. The country’s rail network has also suspended most passenger services.
The Prime Minister had ordered all non-essential government offices and private businesses be shut down and all Indians remained at home for three weeks.
Shortly after the lockdown directive, a number of workers who had lost their jobs in the cities walked for days in desperation to reach their homes in rural India.
Media reports suggested that many of these people are now in overcrowded quarantine centres and are struggling to cope.
Inidia, which has a population of 1.3bn, has so far reported over 26, 496 COVID-19 cases and 824 deaths.
India joins a growing list of countries that have imposed similar measures. Nearly 400,000 people have tested positive for the virus worldwide and around 17,000 have died.