The video of two women from the Kuki-Zomi community being paraded naked and sexually assaulted in Manipur continues to garner public outcry and condemnation. Amid the uproar, reports quoted one of the victims as claiming they were “left to the mob by the police” while another said that the inebriated men raped them as an act of “revenge” over a fake post. In the ghastly incident that took place in May this year, two women, one in her 20s and the other in her 40s, were made to walk naked down a road and towards a field by a mob of men. Some of the men could be seen dragging the two women while forcibly groping them.
According to a report by the Indian Express, the victims filed a police complaint on May 18, the victims where they said that the younger woman was “brutally gang raped in broad daylight”.
In the complaint, the victims said they had fled to a forest for shelter after their village in Kangpokpi district was attacked by a mob and they were later rescued by Thoubal police. They were stopped on the way by a mob when they were being taken to the police station, and were seized from police custody around two kilometres away from the police station, the Indian Express report said citing the complaint.
The IE report quoted the younger woman as alleging, “The police were there with the mob which was attacking our village. The police picked us up from near home, and took us a little away from the village and left us on the road with the mob. We were given to them by police.”
The victims in the police complaint stated that there were five of them together including the two women seen in the video, another woman in her 50s who was also allegedly stripped, as well as the father and brother of the youngest woman, who the victims claimed were killed by the mob.
“After all the men were killed, and the mob did what they did, we were just left there and we escaped,” she said, as quoted by IE.
The media report mentioned her saying that she and her family were not aware of the existence of a video capturing the incident, which sparked outrage and also led to police action two months after the FIR was filed.
“There is no internet here in Manipur, we wouldn’t know,” she was quoted as saying, talking from her husband’s house in a phone conversation.
The victim said there were “too many” men who were part of the mob, but she was able to recognise a few of them. She stated that one of them was a friend of her brother’s.
Men Were Inebriated, Said They Were Taking Revenge: Another Victim
In another report by The Print, one of the victims, a Kuki woman in her 40s said that the men were inebriated, some as young as 15 years old, who dragged her and a teenager to a paddy field in Kangpokpi district on May 4 and raped them.
As the shocking sexual violence was on, the men screamed, “We will do to you what your men did to our women”, the report stated, adding that the motive behind the incident was retribution.
“It was all because of a fake news. The men were saying ‘this is revenge for the Churachandpur case’,” The Print quoted the woman, sitting in a vacant room at a relief camp in Churachandpur, as saying.
The victim was still numb and in a state of shock while trying to rebuild her life and planning to move out of the relief camp, the report mentioned.
“I can’t make sense of anything. The men were under the influence of alcohol. I don’t think they knew what they were doing,” she was quoted as saying.
Manipur Rape: One Of The Men Seen In Video Arrested
As the country expressed shock over the viral video of the incident, a man, who was part of the mob that paraded naked tribal women in Kangpokpi district, was arrested on Thursday.
Police said that the arrested person was seen prominently directing the mob at B. Phainom village of Kangpokpi district in the 26-second video that surfaced on Wednesday.
As per news agency PTI, police last night said a case of abduction, gang rape and murder was registered at Nongpok Sekmai police station in Thoubal district against unknown armed men and that all-out efforts were being made to arrest the culprits at the earliest.
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