World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Indian children participate in a protest against child abuse and rising crimes against women, in Bhubaneswar, India, Saturday, March 16. (AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout)

Indian police said they arrested five men Sunday in connection with the gang rape of a Swiss woman who was on a cycling vacation with her husband in central India.

All five men admitted to the attack, which occurred Friday night as the woman and her husband camped out in a forest in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh state, said D. K. Arya, a senior police officer. Another police officer said earlier that six men had been arrested.

Arya said police were searching for two more men involved in the attack.

The couple told police that the woman had been raped by seven or eight men, but that it was dark and they could not be sure of the exact number, Arya said. They said the husband also was attacked by the men.

The woman, 39, was treated Saturday at a hospital in the nearby city of Gwalior and was released later that day, police said.

The couple were planning to travel later Sunday to New Delhi, India's capital, police said.

The attack came three months after the fatal gang rape of a woman aboard a New Delhi bus outraged Indians and spurred the government to pass laws to protect women.