Danish woman’s alleged rapist swapped clothes with her, left evidence: cops

New Delhi – Police investigating the alleged gang-rape of a Danish woman in Delhi on Tuesday night say they have crucial evidence after learning that one of the alleged rapists allegedly pulled on the woman’s track pants and left her his pair of jeans.

The attacker’s jeans and the woman’s clothes will provide DNA evidence, said police sources.

Two men have been arrested and two others detained for the alleged assault on the 51-year-old tourist near Delhi’s Connaught Place area.

The woman was allegedly attacked by a gang of eight men after she lost her way to her hotel in Paharganj, a popular backpacker area. All eight have been identified. The woman had approached them for directions after visiting a museum, but they took her to a secluded spot before raping her.

The woman, who had arrived in Delhi that day after visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, returned to Denmark yesterday.

She told the police she was held by the men between 4 and 7 pm after which they abandoned her. She then took an auto-rickshaw to her hotel where she confided in a fellow tourist, who asked the owner to phone the police. She says she was robbed and beaten too.

The Danish foreign ministry has said that it is in contact with the Delhi Police to ensure the “prosecution of the guilty.”

“We have in our travel advice referred to the particular risk there is in India for sexual crimes. Obviously we will look at whether we need to sharpen it further,” Denmark foreign ministry spokesman Ole Eberg Mikkelsen said.

The incident has left Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on the backfoot weeks after it won massive popular support in state polls with its promise to make the city safer for women.

Last month marked the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gang-raped on a moving Delhi bus in an attack that horrified India and triggered massive protests that led to sweeping changes in laws on crimes against women.