"Sexual aggression in India unlike anywhere": Foreign journalist poses serious questions on women's safety

Not much has changed for women in India even after the Delhi gang rape and murder case. Women's safety still remains a question of circumstances, place and time rather than a basic human right available at all times. Jharkhand gang rape case has been a yet another wake-up call on the safety of women in India. The one that merits not just nationwide outrage but some concrete and actionable introspection. After the Spanish woman was allegedly gangraped by seven men on Friday night, in Jharkhand's Dumka another foreigner, a journalist seconds the level of unsafety that exists for women in general and foreigners in particular in India.

Known by the user name David Josef Volodzko, she posts as many as three unfortunate isolated incidents on X putting a serious question mark on women's safety in the nation.

"The level of sexual aggression I witnessed while living in India for several years was unlike anywhere else I have ever been. Once a total stranger, a british woman asked to sleep in my bed and pretend to be my girlfriend on a train ride because a man walking by in the hall had licked her foot and she felt unsafe."

She adds, "I introduced a female friend to a young Indian man and instead of shaking her hand, he groped her breast, and when she became angry he became extremely hostile and I thought I was going to have to fight the guy."

The lengthy post further continues to read, "I never met a female traveler who had not been groped or assaulted or worse, even if they had only been in the country for mere days. I love India. It is and always will be one of my favorite places in the world. But I have advised female friends who asked me not to travel there alone. This is a real problem in Indian society that warrants more attention and that I hope will improve in time."

The Jharkhand Gang Rape

The Spanish woman was gangraped while she was out with her husband on a bike ride. The police have filed a complaint in the case against unknown persons and have so far managed to arrest three people. The Dumka police later said in a statement that the unfortunate incident took place at a deserted place in Kurumahat village near Hansdiha police station.

In a video message that later went viral on social media, the woman and her husband are visibly distressed with assault marks on their faces. The couple was on two bikes and were going from Bengal to Nepal via Dumka where they had put up their tents for a night stay.

Unfortunate cases galore!

In 2020, a man was held for raping three foreign nationals while they were visiting Jaipur. The man, identified as Rupak Chatterjee, was a self proclaimed Godman and even had similar cases against him in various states. In December 2022, a court in Thiruvananthapuram awarded double life term to two men for the rape and murder of a Latvian tourist in 2018. The 33-year-old woman was traveling with her sister when she suddenly went missing from her resort in the southern state of Kerala. Her dead body was recovered 38 days later from an isolated mangrove in the famous tourist city Kovalam. In June 2022, a British woman was allegedly raped near the famous tourist spot of Arambol beach in Goa in front of her male partner. The accused, a local resident Vincent D'Souza, was a part of the racket that offered illegal massage services. Commenting on the latest Jharkhand incident, an angry netizen opined, "If this can happen to women who are accompanied and escorted by male members, I'm surprised they don't already issue red alert and grave warnings to solo women even thinking of traveling anywhere in India."