Indian taxi driver held over Japanese tourist rape

NEW DELHI: A taxi driver accused of raping and threatening a Japanese vacationer near a prominent Indian tourist destination has been arrested, police said on Saturday.

The 30-year-old visitor said she had flagged down the driver’s cab on Wednesday in Manali, a resort town in the Himalayan foothills popular with foreign travellers, to travel to a neighbouring town. She was instead taken to an isolated location in a nearby forest and sexually assaulted in the driver’s car, police said.

"She said she surrendered to him after the driver told her that if she resisted the rape attempt, he would call his friends to gang-rape her," regional police chief Shalini Agnihotri said.