Indian driver accused of raping woman travelling with infant daughter

The incident comes barely a week after India marked the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gang raped on a New Delhi bus in an attack that sent shockwaves across the nation.

NEW DELHI // A Polish woman was drugged and raped as she travelled to the Indian capital with her two-year-old daughter, police said yesterday.

The woman, 33, and her daughter were travelling in a taxi from Mathura where they live to New Delhi last Thursday when she was allegedly raped by the driver.

The driver drugged the woman at some point during the 150-kilometre journey and she was attacked after she passed out.

The woman woke up on a bench outside a railway station in New Delhi with her toddler crying by her side, police said, adding she was drugged by a type of liquid spray.

The woman, a devotee of the Hindu god Krishna, had been living in Mathura, believed to be the birthplace of Krishna, in Uttar Pradesh for the past three years and worked in the cloth export business.

She and her daughter had been waiting on a busy road in Mathura for a taxi to take them to the capital when the driver approached.

The January 2 incident comes barely a week after India marked the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gang raped on a New Delhi bus in an attack that sent shock waves across the nation.

The rape triggered massive protests over the levels of violence against women, but in the past 12 months there have been several more cases of local and foreign woman being attacked.

* Agence France-Presse