For a good six hours on the intervening night of May 3 and 4, four women Ph.D. research scholars of the Manipur University campus in Imphal cowered in a toilet of their hostel building as an armed mob went about systematically locating students, staff and faculty from the Kuki-Zomi community.
The mob which was brandishing sticks and knives were shouting slogans like “Sida Kuki Nupi Leibra?” (Is there any Kuki woman here?) and “Kuki Nupi Hatlo” (Kill Kuki women).
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Soon they forced all female students out of their rooms and started verbally abusing and harassing them.
“I along with three other girls hid in the toilet,” one of the victims, who refused to be identified, told The Hindu.
“But they soon found out and started banging on the door of the washroom, almost breaking it, and we were forced to come out,” she said.
Luckily for her, the three other women with her were from another tribe and all of them were asked to go and get their identity cards from their rooms. “It was during this melee that I managed to slip out and hide again in the corridor”, the young research scholar who is now in Delhi said.
Many others continued to suffer abuse and harassment at the hands of the mob, she added.
It was around 3.30 a.m. that the Assam Rifles managed to rescue the girls and take them to the nearest Manipur police campus in Imphal.
The 29-year old Zoology student has given up all hope of resuming her research and is working in a call centre here to meet day-to-day requirements.
“There is no going back to the campus. Communal feeling is so strong now it would be foolish for us to go back,” she says.
“Our home is gone. When you are suddenly coping with everyday expenses, Ph.D. becomes a very minor thing. Since I am a Zoology student, all my samples were in the campus and I have lost them now.”
Another student who spoke with The Hindu recounted the terror she felt when she heard the mob going room to room in search of women from the Kuki community.
The young scholar who refused to divulge her location still lives in Manipur. She says she fears stepping out of her room and is desperately trying to piece her life together while battling nightmares. “I am in the last stage of editing my thesis and do not know what the future holds for me,” she said.
The Manipur University attack was among the six incidents flagged to the National Commission for Women by two activists and a U.S.-based civil society organisation. This included the gang rape and assault on the women in B. Phainom village of Kangpokpi district on May 4 which was captured in a video which went viral.
The other incidents listed in the appeal are harassment of two young women at Nightingale Nurse Institute in Imphal on May 4, the alleged rape and murder of two young women in the Konung Mamang area of Imphal on May 5, the killing of a 45-year-old woman in Pheitaiching village of Kangpokpi and sexual assault of an 18-year-old in Wangkhei on May 15.
While a video of the 18-year old victim from Wangkhei recounting her ordeal surfaced on Saturday, most of the other victims are not willing to speak as they are worried for their safety, one of the complainants in the NCW letter told The Hindu. Many families have refused to file FIRs for fear of retribution.
The NCW had on July 21 said that it had forwarded all the complaints made to the Manipur Chief Secretary and DGP, but had got not reply from them.
