New Delhi: Almost a year to the day when a purportedly Meitei mob paraded women from the Kuki-Zo community and sexually assaulted them in Manipur’s Churachandpur district, a report by Indian Express on the charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation has revealed harrowing details.
The report says that the two women who were seen in a video that was shared widely in July 2023 reached a police van and requested to be driven away, but were told by police that that would not be possible and instead left to a large mob.
The incident took place on May 3, 2023, according to the CBI’s charge sheet, the report said. This is the day that clashes began in Manipur. Earlier reports had surmised that the incident is from May 4, 2023.
The video – purportedly from B. Phainbom village – showed several men, all apparently Meiteis, walking alongside the two women as they are led into fields. The video shows at least some of the men groping the women. Surrounding them are hundreds of other men, some bystanders and others apparently part of the mob. One of the women was gang-raped, the first information report (FIR) filed in connection with the incident said.
Both the Kuki women seen in the video had told The Wire in the immediate aftermath of the video becoming viral that Manipur Police had been present at the scene of the crime but did not help them.
The CBI’s charge sheet appears to concur as it says that the two women had “managed to sit inside the police Gypsy” parked on the roadside. When they requested the police driver to start the vehicle, he told them “there is no key”.
The Express report says that two other male victims were also seated in the police Gypsy. With them were two policemen and a driver. Three or four policemen were outside. Despite the claim that there was no key, the driver did start the Gypsy but stopped it near a “violent mob of around 1,000 people.”
“After some time, one police personnel came and told his colleagues that the man had stopped breathing. On hearing this, the male victim told the woman victim that his father was beaten to death,” the CBI said in the chargesheet.
All the policemen present then left the spot as a large mob first shook the vehicle and then pulled out the victims from inside it, the chargesheet said, according to the report.
Six people and a juvenile are named in the charge sheet, which was filed before a special court in Guwahati in October.
The Manipur Director General of Police Rajiv Singh told Express that departmental action has been taken against the police personnel.
The report highlights portions of the charge sheet that essays how the mob armed with axes, chased families into the forested area, vowing revenge for “the way you people in Churachandpur treated us (Meitei people).”
