British tourist raped in front of her husband near Goa beach: Police

A British woman on a vacation to India has accused a local masseuse of raping her in front of her husband near a famous beach in Goa.

As per the police complaint, Vincent D'Souza, 32, raped the woman on the pretext of giving her a massage. The man was part of a group that illegally offers massages in an area around the famous Arambol beach in Goa. A senior police officer had said that the accused also used to work as a librarian at a school.

The man allegedly raped the complainant while she was lying along with her husband near the Sweet Water Lake, close to the beach. She alleged that D'Souza not only touched her inappropriately, but also inserted his finger into her vagina.

The woman's husband was unaware of the ordeal and only found out after she opened up to him about it later, per a report in Hindustan Times.

The accused has now been arrested on charges of rape under Section 375 (b) of the Indian Penal Code, which says that a man is said to commit rape if he "inserts, to any extent, any object or a part of the body, not being the penis, into the vagina, the urethra or anus of a woman or makes her do so with him or any other person."

The incident took place on June 2, but the woman only reached out to the police on Monday after consultation with the local British high commission office.

More than 33,000 rapes were reported in India in 2017, according to the latest government figures, but vast numbers go unreported, experts say, with just 32 percent of cases ending in convictions.

Goa recorded the highest increase in sexual crimes in the last two decades. Rape-related crimes in Goa were 5.6 times the national average, according to report by Public Health Foundation of India.

"We noted a significant increase of 70.7% in rape-related crime between 2001 and 2018," added the report. A huge backlog of cases in the highly inefficient Indian criminal justice means that many victims wait years for their attackers to be convicted.