Dutch Tourist Escapes Rape Bid in Nepal Tourist Hub


Kathmandu, Jul 12 (IANS): A 24-year-old Dutch tourist has filed a complaint with police after surviving a rape bid Monday by a knife-wielding Nepali teen in her own hotel room located in Kathmandu's tourist hub Thamel.

Early on Monday morning, the staff at the Potala Guest House in Thamel and a nearby police patrol were alerted by screams coming out of the room of Leude Oostveen, a Dutch tourist who had checked in two days earlier.

They caught a 17-year-old Nepali, Shekhar Tripathi, who was carrying a knife.

According to police, the teen worked as a waiter in a pub adjoining the hotel. He had broken into the Dutch woman's room through the window around 4 a.m., brandishing a knife and threatening to kill her if she resisted him.

There has been an alarming spurt in rapes and gangrapes followed by murder committed by teenagers.

The incident comes less than four months after an American tourist filed a police complaint against the owner of the hotel where she was staying in the same Thamel area, alleging she was raped.

Thamel, once a harmless curiosity for dreadlocked and tattooed tourists coming in search of pot and a dose of eastern mysticism, has today acquired an unsavoury image, thanks to its mushrooming massage parlours regarded as a facade for brothels and gang fights.

Last summer, a 23-year-old American trekking on her own, Aubrey Sacco, went missing from a remote nature trail in Nepal. Despite long searches, Sacco has still not been found.

Prior to that, Nepal Army said it had taken disciplinary action against soldiers found guilty of molesting French trekkers outside Kathmandu valley.

Nepal's reputation as a visitor-friendly nation where tourists were not harmed even during the 10-year Maoist insurgency received a blow in 2005 when in two separate incidents a German and a French woman, travelling on their own, went missing in a national park on the outskirts of Kathmandu valley.

Their decomposed bodies were found much later. Pages torn from the passport of one of them and scattered belongings indicated it was no mere accident.

Nepal is celebrating 2011 as tourism year with the aim of attracting 1 million air-borne visitors and kickstarting the economy that is heavily dependent on tourism.

However, security has deteriorated in the former idyllic Himalayan nation with robberies and attacks against women, especially gangrapes, on the rise.

Human rights activists attribute it to the 10-year communist insurgency that saw both the security forces and Maoist guerrillas use rape as a weapon and the subsequent culture of impunity with few of the attackers brought to justice.

There have been several rape cases where the perpetrators were policemen.

A case that rocked the country was the gangrape of a policewoman inside a police station by her own colleagues, most of whom have yet not been arrested due to protection by powerful politicians.

  

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Title: Dutch Tourist Escapes Rape Bid in Nepal Tourist Hub



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