Panaji, Dec 20 : A 48-year-old British woman tourist was allegedly raped by an unidentified man while she was walking towards a beach in Goa in the wee hours of Thursday, a police official said.

She was also robbed of her belongings by the man who fled after committing the crime, he said.

The incident took place around 4 am in Canacona town, located about 100 km from here, when the woman was going towards the Palolem beach in South Goa district, police inspector Rajendra Prabhudesai told PTI.

"The woman complained to the police that while she was walking from the Canacona railway station towards the beach, an unidentified person forcibly took her to a roadside where he raped her," he said.

The woman had gone to catch a train from Canacona to Thivim station located in North Goa district. But, as the train got delayed, she decided to return to the place where she was staying near the Palolem beach, he said.

"The accused, who saw the woman walking alone, pushed her to a paddy field on the roadside near a telecom company's office. He first hit her in the eyes, due to which her vision blurred for a few minutes, and then raped her," the police official said quoting the complaint.

The accused later fled while taking away three bags of the woman, he said. A search was on for the culprit, he said, adding that some suspects from the area were being rounded up.

Prabhudesai said the woman had been regularly visiting Goa for the last 10 years. Canacona taluka in South Goa is a tourism hub with popular beaches like Agonda and Palolem.

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Mumbai (PTI): NCP chief and Maharashtra deputy CM Sunetra Pawar on Saturday said she has forwarded Rupali Chakankar's resignation as state women's commission chairperson to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for acceptance.

Chakankar, a leader of the Nationalist Congress Party, on Friday tendered her resignation after facing flak from opposition parties over her association with rape-accused 'godman' Ashok Kharat.

Following a meeting with CM Fadnavis, who asked her to step down, she handed the resignation letter personally to Sunetra Pawar late in the evening.

"Chakankar has tendered her resignation considering the current circumstances and ongoing investigation. To ensure that the probe is conducted in a fair and transparent manner, I have forwarded her resignation to the Chief Minister for further process," Pawar said in a statement.

Appointed as chairperson of the Maharashtra State Women's Commission first in October 2021, Chakankar was given another three-year term in 2024.

Kharat, who heads a temple trust at Sinnar and had several political leaders visit him over the years, was arrested by Nashik Police on Wednesday for allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulting a woman.

As per the complainant, he called her to his office sometime in 2022 after her marriage, claiming that his astrological predictions point to a threat to her husband’s life and she needed to perform certain rituals to ward it off. He then gave her a sedative-laced drink and raped her, the woman alleged, claiming that he raped her multiple times over the next three years.