Union Tourism Minister K Chiranjeevi on Saturday expressed his anguish over a US student’s claim that she suffered sexual harassment during her one-year stay in India, saying that he was making efforts to bring in measures to further enhance the security of tourists, especially women.
“I was extremely pained when I read about the harassment that a student encountered during her year-long stay in India,” the minister said in a statement here.
Chiranjeevi said he was coordinating with the Home, External Affairs and Law ministries to bring about “further measures” for enhancing the security of tourists, especially women.
He recently took up the issue of security to tourists with the states in the wake of two recent cases of assault on women tourists. “Consequently, all state tourism departments have unanimously agreed to put in place measures to give greater security to all tourists, specially women,” he said.
Michaela Cross, a US student at the University of Chicago, recently wrote about her study trip to India in 2012 on the website of an Indian news channel, claiming that she experienced “relentless sexual harassment, groping and worse.”
The student claimed that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after returning home. She claimed to be on a mental leave of absence from the school after a public breakdown in spring.
Drawing strong reactions from all quarters, her story went viral on the cyberspace as it was viewed about a million times and raked in some 1,400 comments and 85,000 shares on Facebook and Twitter.