Jessica Davies, who had been travelling alone across India for three weeks when last week’s incident occurred, said she feared for her life when two men tried to force their way into her room at a hotel near the Taj Mahal.
Her terrifying experience – which has resulted in Sachin Chauhan, the owner of the Hotel Agra Mahal in Agra, northern India, facing charges of harassment – follows two recent gang rapes in the country.
Miss Davies, 31, said she wanted to speak out to warn all women travelling in India that they needed to be aware of their personal safety.
She said: ‘The way the men treat women and their attitude to sexual harassment and sexual assault is wrong. If they don’t think there is anything wrong with their attitudes and behaviour, this kind of thing will carry on.’
Miss Davies, a dental hygienist from Greenwich, South-East London, said she had stayed at the hotel for two nights. ‘There have been reports that I asked the owner of the hotel for a wake-up call at 3.45am on the morning he came to my room, but that is untrue.
‘He just turned up at my door, knocked and, when I opened it, was standing there holding two bottles of massage oil. He told me he wanted to give me a free massage and shower. He was drunk.
‘I don’t know why he targeted me because I hadn’t had any other problems with him. Maybe it’s because I’m small and he knew I was in the room on my own.’
Miss Davies, who returned to the UK on Friday after giving a statement to the police in Agra, said when she refused he tried to enter the room – but she managed to push him back and lock the door.
She says he continued knocking on the door for ten minutes, so she screamed for help and began hitting the door in the hope it would wake other guests. Miss Davies said that the owner was still trying to force his way into the room after 45 minutes.
When she heard the voice of a second man asking to come into the room, she shouted at them to go away, told them they were scaring her and pushed a table, with her rucksack on top, against the door.
‘I noticed the balcony door lock wasn’t secured,’ she added. ‘I fully believed they would eventually enter my room from the balcony and get inside with the intention of raping me.’
At 5am, an hour and a quarter after the ordeal began, Miss Davies realised no one was coming to help her and decided to jump from her second-floor balcony.
Police have arrested the hotel's owner, Sachin
Chauhan, pictured, and said it could be six months to a year before the
case goes to court
‘I didn’t take any of my other stuff, and I didn’t go back for it afterwards. I just wanted to escape.’
She jumped from her second-floor balcony to one on the first floor – and then from there to the ground, injuring her right leg as she landed.
She then ran to a nearby road and flagged down a rickshaw driver, who took her to the local police station. ‘I really can’t thank that rickshaw driver enough,’ said Miss Davies, who is still limping badly and has extensive bruising around her foot and ankle.
‘I really do think I’ve been very lucky. I only have superficial injuries to my leg but I am still shocked and feeling anxious about what happened. The Indian police said it could be six months to a year before the case goes to court but when it does, I’m going to be ready for it.
‘I will go back if I have to in order to give evidence.’
Just days before the incident, Indian police said a Swiss cyclist was gang-raped after she and her husband were attacked while camping.
And, last December, the fatal gang rape of 23-year-old student Jyoti Singh, on a bus in Delhi, provoked international revulsion.
DAILYMAIL
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