A 44-year-old Indian businessman was convicted of raping a 15-year-old on a Swiss Airlines flight from Mumbai to Zurich in March 2025. The prosecution said the victim was too shocked and frightened to raise the alarm or flee during the nine-hour flight. The man was arrested on landing, given an 18-month suspended sentence, deported and banned from re-entering Switzerland for five years. The case applied Switzerland's updated rape laws from July 1, 2024, which adopt a 'no means no' principle, allow verbal refusal to determine consent, and permit courts to consider a victim's shock or fear.
An Indian businessman has been deported and banned from Switzerland for five years after being found guilty of the rape of a teenage girl on a flight from Mumbai to Zurich. A court in the Swiss town of Bulach found the 44-year-old businessman guilty of rape after he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl on a Swiss airlines flight to Zurich in March 2025. He was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence, deported from the country and banned from re-entering Switzerland for five years.
For over thirty years, the country's Swiss Criminal Code considered rape to require penetration and physical resistance from the victim, in order to be prosecuted. Verbal communication of a clear no' or any consideration of the victim's state of shock or fear were not seen as determining factors in prosecution. But, from July 1st 2024 the principle of no means no began to be applied in rape investigations and prosecutions, in Switzerland with verbal refusal of consent taken into consideration by police and the judiciary.
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