New Delhi: In a vacant room in a relief camp in Churachandpur, the woman in her 40s — one of the two women seen in the now-viral video from Manipur — recalled how her village was attacked on 3 May, the same day ethnic clashes broke out in the state. By the next morning, she had sent her four children to take shelter in a Naga settlement located about 40 minutes from her home.
She and her husband were among the last few to flee their village in Kangpokpi district.
As they hid in the nearby forest with eight others, they were intercepted by a Meitei mob.
“The mob had burnt Kuki villages on the hills and the men were returning with the pigs, cows and goats they looted. The stray goats came towards us and that’s how the mob found us,” the Kuki woman in her 40s had told ThePrint.
She recalled how the mob divided the Kuki villagers in two groups and took her in the direction of the main road, along with a younger woman — also seen in the viral video — besides the younger woman’s brother and father.
“All our belongings were burnt; the mob kept reassuring us that they won’t harm us,” said the woman.
But as the mob swelled, punches and kicks followed. Men tugged at their clothes and groped them, she recollected, adding that she, along with the younger woman and the brother, took shelter in a police jeep parked on the main road, but it provided them no cover from the groping and the beating.
The mob then rocked the jeep before dragging the brother out.
“Two policemen and a driver were in the jeep. But they did not help us. Instead, they abandoned the jeep, giving a free hand to the mob,” she said. The younger woman’s father and brother were lynched by the mob and their bodies thrown into a drain, she recalled.
The mob, she said, then turned to the two women who were forced to strip and dragged to a paddy field on the side of the road. This is when someone recorded the video which has now surfaced on social media.
In the paddy field, two groups of men surrounded the women a few metres apart and allegedly raped them. “I kept begging them to leave me. I told them I am a mother, thinking that they will have mercy,” the woman in her 40s had told ThePrint.
But her pleading fell on deaf ears.
A larger crowd surrounded the younger woman, lying a few metres away. The older woman said she could hear her screaming and men shouting “who wants to rape her”.
She also said that she saw familiar faces in the crowd and begged them to let her and the other woman go. Some of the men, she said, were from neighbouring villages.
The ordeal lasted two hours after which the mob took them back to the spot where their clothes lay next to the police jeep.
“The younger woman broke down after seeing her father and brother dead. Some men then came to us and told us to leave, otherwise we would also be killed,” she said.
She also recollected how some men handed over their t-shirts to her and the younger women and how others then snatched the clothes from them. Wrapped in shawls and dupattas, the two women started walking back towards the jungle route leading to their village — which by then had been largely abandoned.
Once they were back in the village, the women joined others who were fleeing the violence and after days of trekking through jungles and making pit stops at Naga villages, reached the relief camps in Churachandpur with the help of Assam Rifles personnel.
They never visited a hospital for a medical examination, the woman in her 40s had told ThePrint. The younger woman, sources in Manipur said, was in a delicate state of mind following the assault and had moved to a southern district along with her family.
The ordeal of sexual assault and rape survivors, first reported by ThePrint, had largely remained unaddressed owing to the culture of silence and shame that surrounds crime against women in India.
Also Read: In Manipur, it’s Kuki vs Meitei cops — how unrest exposed ‘ethnic’ faultlines within state police
Breaking the silence
A day after a video of the two Kuki women being paraded naked by a mob surfaced on social media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in addition to Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, made statements Thursday condemning the assault which took place on 4 May, the day after ethnic violence first erupted in the state.
Addressing the media ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, PM Modi said his heart was filled with “pain and anger” upon learning of the incident. “I want to assure my countrymen that no culprit will be spared. What happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” he told reporters.
The Supreme Court too took cognisance of the incident with CJI Chandrachud saying that the court was “very deeply disturbed” and that either the central or the state government should step in and take action or else the court will.
Talking to ThePrint, Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh termed the assault a crime against humanity and pressed for capital punishment for the perpetrators. The state government, he said, will take suo motu cognisance and order a probe.
Though highly-placed sources in Manipur police had told ThePrint earlier that the force never received any official complaints of sexual crimes committed after ethnic violence broke out between the Kukis and the Meiteis, action in this particular case was initiated Wednesday only once the video of a mob parading the two women naked went viral, a week after ThePrint broke the story on the alleged rapes of six Kuki women in Manipur.
On Thursday, the Manipur police arrested 32-year-old Huirem Herodas and three others in connection with the case. Subsequently, an FIR dated 18 May — based on a complaint in this regard by the village chief of B. Phainom village — came to light, alleging that the younger woman “was brutally gang-raped in broad daylight” on 4 May.
Governor Anusuiya Uikey, meanwhile, met Director General of Police (DGP) Rajiv Singh Thursday and directed him to take “immediate steps to book the perpetrators of this heinous crime and award exemplary punishment as per law”. The governor also told media outlets that she directed the state police chief to “take action against police officials of the station where the complaint of this incident was lodged, for not taking any action”.
Ethnic violence in Manipur has claimed at least 150 lives and displaced tens of thousands. Initial instances of violence on 3 May were preceded by a rally held in Churachandpur by the All Tribal Students’ Union Manipur (ATSUM) to oppose Manipur High Court’s recommendation to the government to consider Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for Meiteis.
This report has been updated with additional inputs.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: IDs checked, skull cracked, ‘dumped alive’ in mortuary — 3 Kuki survivors recount Manipur mob horror