Police have served a fresh arrest warrant against Joji Obara, a 48-year-old company executive under arrest for raping a Canadian woman in 1996, on suspicion of raping another foreign woman.

Obara, a senior executive of a Tokyo-based company, is suspected of raping the second woman, who is in her 20s, in a condominium he owns in Zushi, a coastal city in Kanagawa Prefecture, in October 1997 after plying her with alcohol laced with drugs.

Police investigators are looking into possible connections between Obara and a missing Briton, Lucie Blackman, 22, who disappeared July 1 after telling a friend that a man was taking her for a drive to the coast, as well as other cases of drug-induced rape reported by several women.