Concerns over the Manipur sexual assault case prompted Indian ladies to set fire to the suspect’s home.
According to state police, women in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur invaded the home of the primary suspect in a sexual assault case that has outraged the country.
Police said on Friday that the suspect is accused of dragging two tribal women onto the streets in May and encouraging a mob to rape and display them naked.
The sexual assault happened more than two months ago but came to national attention last week after a video surfaced on social media, sparking discontent in Manipur.
The primary suspect, a citizen of Manipur, was detained on Thursday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the assault “shameful” and pledged harsh punishment.
Police have detained three more people, and they are looking for at least 30 more suspects in the crime.
Hemant Pandey, a senior police official in the state capital Imphal, claimed that “local women pelted stones and burned some parts of the house belonging to the prime accused in a village.”
There is a great deal of discomfort, so we ask ladies to demonstrate peacefully. We recognize their fury,” he stated.
According to the police complaint submitted in May, an armed mob destroyed some homes in a village in the Kangpokpi district by setting them on fire before attacking Kuki tribal members.
The complaint states that the mob then sexually attacked two naked women, ages 21 and 19.
While the state was experiencing severe ethnic clashes in May, the victims reported the assault. A court ruling directing the government to explore providing the majority Meitei population with the same special benefits as the Kuki tribe members set off the violence.
Since the violence started, at least 125 people have died and more than 40,000 have fled their homes.
In order to highlight concerns about the safety of women in the nation, rights organizations have planned protests in a number of Indian cities, calling for justice and prompting investigations into the most recent crime.
We want to know why the police did not respond so quickly when they were informed that women were being raped and paraded in Manipur, said Radhika Burman, a student in Kolkata’s eastern district who organized a public protest on Thursday.
The slogan “Women’s body is not a battlefield” was displayed on several of the banners carried by the hundreds of protesters marching in Bengaluru, in southern India. They also questioned why authorities did not look into the matter that two victims from a tribal minority community had reported in May.
Samakaleena Samajik Sanskritik Vedike, a civil society organization in Bengaluru, was founded by H. J. Lakshmi. “This is gross injustice and neglect,” she stated.
Similar protests also took place on some college campuses nationwide and in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar.
A day after the viral recordings of women being groped went viral, Modi addressed the unrest in a state where his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power.