In another shocking blow for India's international reputation, the 39-year-old woman was attacked by an armed group of men, who beat her and gang-raped her in front of her husband, who was handcuffed and assaulted.

The men arrested are all reportedly members of the Kanjar tribe, a historically nomadic ethnic group who, traditionally, sold rope and other crafts to villagers, but who also have a reputation for violence, kidnapping, and "dacoity", or banditry.

Police official MS Dhodee said the attack was a spur-of-the-moment crime.

"We have detained five men and they have confessed to gang-raping the woman and attacking her husband," he said.

"They were passing by, noticed the couple putting up their tent and saw an opportunity to attack and rape the woman."

The woman and her husband, residents of Lausanne, were cycling through the central Indian province from the tourist site of Orchcha, to Agra, site of the Taj Mahal.

Shortly after 9pm, the men invaded the couple's campsite near a village. They beat the man with sticks before handcuffing him and raping the woman in front of him.

The men fled, taking with them the couple's mobile phones, computer and cash, which police said later they had recovered.

‘‘We found the laptop buried carefully under a pile of leaves, near some shrubs in the forest," Mr Dhodee said. "The mobile phone was recovered from the home of the mother-in-law of one of the men.’’

The five arrested men face charges of rape and robbery. The sixth suspect is expected to face the same charges.

After the attack the couple flagged a passing motorist to reach a police station at Datia district.

The Swiss Embassy in New Delhi has called for a "swift investigation and justice". The Ambassador has been in contact with the couple.

Madhya Pradesh, Hindi for Central Province, has a largely rural, poor, and conservative Hindu, population.

But the state has, for the past two decades, recorded the highest number of rape cases of any province in the country.

In 2011 (the most recent complete figures available) there were 3406 reported cases of rape in Madhya Pradesh: nine women raped every day.

The rape of the Swiss national comes three months after the gang rape and fatal bashing of a 23-year-old woman on a Delhi bus sparked outrage across India.

The woman was raped for nearly an hour by five men and a youth, and beaten and raped with an iron bar, before she was thrown, naked and unconscious, from the moving vehicle onto the road.

Her death, 13 days later in a Singapore hospital from horrific internal injuries, provoked massive protests across India over the treatment of women, and forced the government to legislate for harsher punishments of rapists.

The main suspect in that case was found dead in his prison cell last week. Police said Ram Singh hanged himself, but his family believe he was murdered.

In a disturbingly similar case to the Delhi attack, but in the state of Madhya Pradesh, a 38-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped near Indore on Friday.

Three men, including the conductor and the driver, allegedly raped the woman on board the bus after all the other passengers got off.

with AFP, AAP