The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has sent notice to the Government of Manipur on the mob taking away five members of a family from police custody, parading the women naked and sexually assaulting one of them, a statement informed on Thursday. It said that NHRC India has taken cognisance of complaints seeking its urgent intervention into the incident of a mob taking away five members of a tribal family from police custody in B Phainom village of Kangpokpi district in Manipur on 4 May 2023.
"Allegedly, the mob paraded naked the two of the women, brutally gang-raped one of them, and murdered two male members of the family, who tried to protect the women," the statement read.
The NHRC stated that it has issued notices to the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police, Manipur calling for a detailed report in the matter within 4 weeks. "It should include the status of the investigation of the FIRs registered with regard to the incidents, health status of the victim women and other injured persons as well as compensation, if any, granted to the aggrieved persons/ families," the statement read.
"The Commission would also like to know about the steps taken/ proposed to be taken to safeguard human rights of the citizens, especially women and vulnerable sections of the society from such barbaric incidents," it added.
This comes as two persons have been arrested so far in connection with this case. The two arrests include the main accused named Khuyrum Heradas who was arrested from Thoubal district earlier in the day.
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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.