New Delhi, August 22 – In an insensitive remark, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday that the brutal gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student in 2012 cost India billions of dollars in tourism.
“One small incident of rape, which was covered internationally, has cost us billions of dollars in global tourism,” said the minister, who was addressing the conference of state tourism ministers in Delhi.
Dwelling on how to boost India’s tourism, he stressed on improving women safety and lower taxation. “If tourism industry, state governments and the centre are loaded with higher taxes then we will have less tourists and lesser collection,” Jaitley said.
The paramedic students and her male friend were abducted in a bus on December 12, 2012. The assailants gangraped the woman in the moving bus, while brutally assaulting her and his friend.
The woman later succumbed to her injuries. The incident caused massive uproar in India, forcing the then UPA government to make amendments in the existing rape laws.
– INDIA TODAY
