Criminal Amnesia

The focus may have now shifted to the Kolkata gang rape case, but questions about the sexual violence in Manipur since May 2023 remain unanswered

- Rakhi Bose in Churachandpur, Kangpokpi and Imphal

NINETEEN-year-old Angel* from Manipur is filled with terror every time she hears the revving of a car or spots one, especially if it’s a white four-by-four. She recalls how her attackers had come in white and purple Mahindra Bolero vehicles on May 15, 2023—a fortnight after ethnic clashes broke out between the Kukis and the Meiteis in Manipur—when she, a Kuki, was abducted from outside an ATM in East Imphal where she had gone to withdraw cash. Then 18, Angel was assaulted all night by mobs comprising Meitei men and women before being gang raped by unidentified armed men. She did not tell anyone about her ordeal till July, when inside a relief camp in Kangpokpi district where she and her family had taken shelter, Angel came across “that horrible video”. Her eyes welled up and a sharp pain seared her chest as she watched the video of the two women being assaulted and paraded naked by a mob. Though she did not know the women, she knew instantly what they had gone through. “I decided to fight for justice, not just for me but for all the women who faced this trauma,” she says.

Justice, however, remains elusive even after a year of national protests, international outrage, political mudslinging and interventions by the Supreme Court and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). None of Angel’s attackers has been arrested or even identified. She isn’t the only one. A majority of the survivors of sexual violence or kin of victims from the tribal Kuki-Zo communities, disproportionately targeted in the ethnic clashes, have so far received no relief or reassurance.