The shocking gangrape of two women in Koppal militates against India’s oft-repeated phrase, ‘Atithi devo bhava’, or treating every guest as god. On March 6 night, two women—an Israeli tourist and a local homestay owner—were allegedly gang-raped by three miscreants after the victims’ three male friends, including an American tourist, were assaulted and thrown into the Tungabhadra canal in Karnataka’s Koppal. While two swam back to safety, one tourist from Odisha drowned.
There have been several such attacks on tourists in recent times. A British woman was allegedly raped by a man in a hotel in Delhi’s Mahipalpur area on Tuesday; the woman complained that another man molested her in the hotel’s lift when she went asking for help. Last October, a 21-year-old youth died after a few local miscreants attacked the occupants of a farmhouse in Chikkanahalli near Bengaluru. In March 2017, a 28-year-old Irish-British national was raped and murdered in Goa’s Canacona village; a local resident was found guilty last month and sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment.
The shockwaves from the Koppal incident led to tourists fleeing the town. In a typical knee-jerk reaction, the authorities raided the town’s homestays. It was then discovered that 117 homestays in and around Hampi and Koppal were unregistered despite the Karnataka Tourism Act making it mandatory. Incidents like these threaten the image of Indian tourism. This does not bode well for the World Travel & Tourism Council’s projection of Indian tourism doubling in revenues from the current $256 billion to $523 billion in a decade, and foreign tourist arrivals growing from 9.24 million in 2023 to 30.5 million in 2028. The industry currently sustains 4.5 crore Indians and is forecast to contribute ₹43,25,000 crore to the GDP by 2034.
If this rosy projection is to be realised, protection of tourists—both domestic and foreign—becomes an imperative even as Indian police forces face a 20 percent shortage in personnel. Although trained and registered tourist guides are present across the country, the need of the hour is an exclusive tourist police force for their protection and safety awareness. If the much-used Sanskrit phrase is to be honoured as a goal, the effort should start with protection of tourists.