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24-07-2023
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI: Thousands of tribals, mostly women, have staged a massive sit-in protest in India’s Manipur, demanding the arrest of those involved in the harrowing mob assaults on two women, as the opposition parties slammed the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for failing to stop violence in the northeastern state bordering Myanmar.
Saturday’s protest, organized by the women’s wing of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF), was believed to be attended by about 15,000 people in Churachandpur, a tribal majority city 65km (40 miles) south of the capital Imphal.
Religious and women organisation leaders leading the protest called for the sacking of Biren Singh, the top elected official in the state where more than 130 people have been killed since violence between Meiti and Kuki ethnic groups erupted in early May.
A 26-second video showing the assaults on women belonging to the ethnic Kuki-Zo tribe triggered massive outrage and was widely shared on social media late on Wednesday despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists locked out of the remote state.
The footage shows the two naked women surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field.
The state government on Saturday announced the arrest of a fifth suspect in connection with the incident, which the 
police said occurred on May 4 – a day after the ethnic violence erupted. Rajiv Singh, the state’s director-general of police, said police were carrying out raids to arrest other suspects.
According to a police complaint filed on May 18, the two women were part of a family attacked by a mob that killed its two male members. The complaint alleges rape and murder by “unknown miscreants”.
The protesters assembled at a “Wall of Remembrance” site in an open ground in Churachandpur, a stronghold of the Kuki tribe, where they kept dummy coffins of people of their minority community killed in the violence.
Ngaineikim, the chairperson of the Kuki Women’s Organization for Human Rights, accused Singh, who belongs to the majority Meiti community, of orchestrating atrocities and then expressing sympathy with the victims.
