The Daily Express's very grim Indian summer

“Horror as woman ‘abducted at bus stop and gang-raped” after child, 10, murdered nearby,’ ran a particularly grim headline on the Daily Express’s website on July 21, reporter Emily Wright telling the horrific story of a woman being confined to a room and sexually assaulted by a trio of men.

Given its awful nature, Express readers could have been forgiven for wondering why it wasn’t leading the TV news – although closer inspection reveals why. The incident had occurred in the Mysuru district of Karnataka, India – an unusual place for the Express, not known for its foreign coverage (and Wright’s own bio on the site shows she is based in London/Surrey, not India).

Equally confusing was the “child, 10, murdered nearby”, which formed half of the headline but wasn’t reported in the story until the eighth paragraph. This is probably because that awful crime happened in October 2005, nine months previously, and as Wright herself reported, “the two crimes are unconnected”.

Still, that, and the fact that the crimes happened around 5,000 miles from where most Express readers live didn’t stop the site from adding a poll asking “Do you feel safe where you live?”.

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Rats in a Sack

The paper was at it again, on August 12, with hack Conor Wilson reporting on a “Manhunt launched after woman out with a friend gang raped by group of men”. This was another hideous case, with a man being beaten while his female friend was raped by at least four men.

This one, however, occurred on the road from Bhubaneswar towards Kendrapara in the eastern state of Odisha, India, a long way from where Wilson is based in London’s Canary Wharf.

And this week, on August 24, the site was reporting “Horror as teenage girl ‘gang raped in forest by masked men’ during photoshoot”, with Kris Boratyn writing how attackers had “covered their faces and threatened the victim with knives” as they assaulted a 19-year-old.

You may not be entirely surprised to learn this happened not in the sort of home counties commuter town Express readers tend to live in, but “the Pine Forest area along the Jeypore-Koraput road in Odisha, India”. Readers might have been led astray though, by the image illustrating it – a picture of a white woman walking through a woodland which turns out to be a completely unrelated Getty stock image previously used to illustrate articles on mindfulness, forest bathing and the state of the UK’s trees in 2021.

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Rats in a Sack

These sort of stories abound on the Express’s site, with numerous tales of horrific rapes. The fact they are occurring in India is masked for reasons best known to the Reform-supporting, migrant-bashing former newspaper of record.

In recent days alone, stories like this have included “Horror as woman gang raped in shed after being abducted by 4 men – mother held at gunpoint”, “Woman repeatedly gang raped after horrific torture with belts and wooden club” and “Horror as pregnant woman ‘repeatedly gang raped by 3 brothers and their uncle” – all in India, and all knocked out by the same small group of London-based journalists.

It appears to be the latest attempt to drive traffic by the increasingly desperate paper. The Express’s SEO (search engine optimisation) figures have been hit hard by Google’s AI search results, its traffic from social media has been decimated by Facebook algorithm changes and its paid-for ‘Premium’ option is suffering from very few people being prepared to part with seven quid a month to read Carole Malone’s ramblings.

So Indian rape stories masked to conceal their location it is, then.