Saikul: She had made a promise to herself — that she would not cry anymore. It has been two months since she lost her 24-year-old sister Alice* to ethnic clashes which first erupted in Manipur on 3 May. But scrolling through her phone records and checking the last time she spoke to her younger sibling, she can’t hold back the tears.
Her wails fill the room at a relief camp in Saikul where she moved in with her parents mid-June after her village, H. Khopibung, was burnt down.
Six days after the family lost contact with Alice, a police official wanted them to verify the identity of a body through a photo. For identification, the photo had to be sent to relatives in Delhi who had internet access. The face had blue marks all over, dried blood on the lips and forehead, and a cut with a sharp object on her neck.
Alice and her 21-year-old friend Mary* were allegedly assaulted by a mob and taken away from a car wash in Imphal where they both worked.
“We were informed by a hospital staff member, who was a Kuki, that when their bodies were brought in at night, they were covered in blood and cuts. We shudder to even think what the two women must have gone through,” said Mary’s cousin, who met ThePrint in Saikul.
ThePrint first reported the incident involving Alice and Mary on 12 July. A week later, a video surfaced of two other Kuki women (also mentioned by ThePrint in the same report) being stripped and paraded in Manipur, creating ripples across the country. ThePrint’s earlier reports mentioned the location of this incident as Kangpokpi. The FIR has now been transferred to neighbouring Thoubal district.
It jolted the Manipur administration, the central government and the Supreme Court out of their slumber about the sexual violence perpetrated against women during ethnic riots in the state. But the 26-second clip was only a glimpse of how innocent women fell prey to mobs.
While the police arrested five men linked to the case of the two women in the video, the families of Alice and Mary still await justice.
They filed a zero First Information Report (FIR) in Saikul police station in Kangpokpi district on 16 May for abduction, rape and murder. This was the same police station where an FIR over the viral video incident was filed. Officials at Saikul police station told ThePrint that they informed the Porompat police station in Imphal East the same day since the car wash where the alleged crime took place fell under its jurisdiction.
But the families say the police, as of Saturday, had not reached them for recording their statements or for collecting evidence.
An official at the Porompat police station told ThePrint that no arrests were made in the case so far as they did not have any leads. They found the bodies of the women about 100-200 metres from the car wash, the official revealed.
Also read: ‘Confessed to joining mob in interest of Meiteis’: Mother of man arrested over Manipur video
‘Mob cut their hair, gagged them’
The last time Alice spoke to her sister was during a phone call at around 3 pm on 4 May. In the six-minute call, a frightened Alice assured her family that she and Mary, her colleague and friend from the same village, were staying put at the car wash. The city was under curfew and large mobs were allegedly on the lookout for Kukis. The family claimed that the owner of the car wash had assured the women they would be safe there.
But for the mob, the locks on the big tin doors were easy to break. “The mob specifically asked for the two Kuki women working there (at the car wash),” alleged Alice’s father.
An eyewitness told Mary’s cousin that the mob dragged the two women from under a bed where they were hiding and beat them up for 10 minutes before taking them to a room and locking it from the inside.
“My cousin (Mary) had long hair. They pulled her from under the bed by her hair,” she said.
The co-workers could hear the women screaming but no one could save them from the mob, Mary’s cousin said, adding that the co-workers were all made to sit in a different room with the lights off. “The women were gagged sometime after being taken to the room. And when the mob left around 7.10 pm, the room was full of Mary’s hair. The mob cut her hair and they took the women away,” she said.
In an earlier version of what may have transpired that night, the women’s parents had told ThePrint that the two women were found dead in the room.
Now, Alice’s sister said that around 11 pm on 4 May, the women’s bodies were found by the police a stone’s throw from the car wash and taken to Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) hospital in Imphal. This was confirmed by the Porompat police.
The families alleged that the owner may have informed the mob about the women and deliberately did not let them escape to safety.
On his part, the owner said there was mayhem in Imphal and he told the women to stay back at the car wash as he felt they would be safe there, dismissing the accusation.
“There were riots outside. Such instances of violence and protests are common in Imphal. I did not assume that it would escalate so much, that a mob will so quickly attack my shop this way,” he told ThePrint. He added that when he reached the car wash around 9 pm on 4 May, he saw both the front and the back gates broken.
Also read: ‘Begged mob to leave me, said I am a mother’: Kuki woman in viral video recalls 2-hr assault
Human couriers to hand over FIRs
While the cacophony over the viral video of two Kuki women led the police to pull out the FIR filed in the viral video case, families of Alice and Mary are still in the dark over whether the investigation in their case is progressing.
Twelve days after the incident, the families walked to Saikul town from their village in the hills about 25-30 km away. Taking great risk by passing through Meitei villages on the way, they first reached the office of Kuki Inpi, a non-profit organisation, where the staff helped Mary’s mother write a complaint letter for the police.
Based on that letter, a zero FIR was registered at the Saikul police station a few metres away. While the parents of the two women had told ThePrint earlier that the incident happened on 5 May, details of the victims’ calls with their families show they last spoke on 4 May. The owner of the car wash, too, confirmed to ThePrint that the attack happened on 4 May. However, the FIR filed by Mary’s mother mentioned 5 May as the day of the attack.
The FIR noted the offence as “voluntarily causing grievous hurt using dangerous weapon, assault or criminal force with an intent to outrage modesty, kidnapping or abducting with intent to murder, wrongful confinement, rape, murder”.
The Saikul police station informed the Porompat police station about the FIR the same day it was filed, said a senior official in Saikul on condition of anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The ethnic division allegedly hampered free movement of even the policemen in Manipur. The invisible boundaries created did not permit either the Meitei policemen to come to Saikul to collect the FIR or the Kuki policemen to go to Imphal to drop the FIRs.
Almost a month later, on 13 June, the two police stations arranged human couriers. A Kuki man went from Saikul till Kanglatongbi where he met a Meitei man sent from Imphal to collect the FIRs. The FIR must have reached Porompat five days later, said the senior official in Saikul quoted earlier.
But it was only after the public outcry last week that the Porompat police station called Saikul to enquire about the whereabouts of the families of Alice and Mary, he added.
However, even before the FIR reached Imphal, Mary’s cousin had received a call on 10 May from the investigating officer from Porompat police station to verify the women’s bodies, which were kept at the JNIMS mortuary, for postmortem.
“The police sent the photos to our relative in Delhi who had an internet connection. She confirmed that the bodies were of our sisters,” she said.
Till date, the families said, they had neither received a post mortem report nor their daughters’ bodies.
Meanwhile, at the car wash in Imphal, it was business as usual. Yet, tension filled the atmosphere every time a police jeep drove in.
(*Name changed to protect the identity of the women)
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
Also read: It took a viral video of rape for India to wake up—Modi to CJI. Manipur was burning for 3 months