Irish aid worker attempts suicide in Calcutta after saying she was raped on 21st birthday

An Irish aid worker who has claimed she was raped in India by a businessman on the night she celebrated her 21st birthday has attempted suicide.

The Irish Independent reports that the 21-year-old attempted to take her own life in a Calcutta hotel when she took a mixture of sleeping pills, painkillers and other drugs.

The paper says she was discovered unconscious in her hotel room by a fellow Irish national who was staying at the same complex.

Sudeshna Lahiri, deputy director of the Calcutta Medical Research Institute, told local reporters that the medicines were pumped from the woman’s stomach.

The woman is expected to make a full recovery.

She has claimed she was sexually assaulted after accompanying a man to his home in the Kalighat area of Kolkata on June 1st. The woman had been celebrating her 21st birthday with friends earlier that night.

Late last year, a 23-year-old Indian woman was gang-raped on a bus as it was driven through New Delhi. She died from her injuries two weeks later.

A 39-year-old Swiss woman was gang-raped in March as she camped in a remote forest in central India with her boyfriend.

A 31-year-old British woman was forced to leap from a second-floor hotel balcony to escape an attacker in the city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.

The spate of attacks have led to a sharp fall in tourist numbers to India, especially among women. The number of foreigners visiting India is down 25 per cent with the number of women travellers down 35 per cent.