An ambulance carrying the coffin of British woman Sarah Groves leaves after her body was embalmed at the Government Medical College in Srinagar yesterday.
Agencies/Srinagar
A Dutch man has confessed to killing a British woman on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Srinagar, police said yesterday.
Sarah Groves, 24, of Guernsey, was found dead on the New Beauty houseboat on Saturday morning. Her death comes amid sexual attacks on women in India.
Richard De Wit, 43, confessed on Saturday evening to stabbing Groves, Deputy Inspector General of police Syed Ahafadul Mujtaba said.
He said De Wit had told the police he had violent tendencies and that he had been under the influence of drugs when he killed her.
“He told us that he had problems with the Dutch government and that he had a strained relationship with his wife,” Mujtaba said. “He said that he woke up under the influence of cannabis, went to her room and killed her.”
The Dutch national was taken into custody as he tried to flee the scenic Kashmir Valley in the foothills of the Himalayas, police superintendent Tahir Sajjad said.
He broke the latch on the cabin door of the woman who had been staying in the houseboat for two months.
De Wit had been staying in the same houseboat as the victim and he had arrived on Thursday, police said.
Mujtaba said the Indian authorities had informed the Dutch government that De Wit was in their custody, and that they also hoped to learn more about his mental condition from his home government.
An Internet message posted by Tom Groves, who said Sarah was his sister, said she travelled to Kashmir because the son of the boat owner was her boyfriend.
The police said a postmortem examination was conducted on Groves on Saturday. Her body is in the mortuary at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences.
Mujtaba said De Wit had not confessed to any sexual assault, and that he hoped to learn more from the results.
Tourism operators in Kashmir were dismayed to hear the news of the murder, and said they fear it may impact on their business, which has already been badly hit by turbulence in the Kashmir Valley this year.
The murder of Groves follows the gang-rape of a Swiss tourist in March in Madhya Pradesh, followed by an incident involving a British woman jumping from her hotel room in Agra to escape a sexual assault.
A recent report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry said after the fatal December 16 gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, which caused international furor, foreign tourist arrivals dropped 25% in the first three months of this year. The number of female foreigners visiting India has dropped 35%.
The tragedy that struck Groves has brought back memories of another British tourist, 19-year-old Alison MacDonald, who disappeared 32 years ago.
MacDonald walked out of her hotel in north Kashmir’s Sonamarg on August 17, 1981, never to return.
Investigations into the missing girl’s disappearance went on for years. Nobody knew her whereabouts, and her parents continue to hope that she would return.
Her disappearance remains a mystery to this day.
The visually-impaired father of the Scottish girl, Kenny MacDonald, and her mother, Reta, visited Kashmir 17 times since her disappearance, hoping to find their daughter alive.