As footage emerged last week of two women in the state of Manipur being forcibly stripped, paraded naked, publicly molested and allegedly gang raped, everyone from prime minister Narendra Modi to the chief justice of India publicly expressed their shock and disgust.
Breaking his long silence on the conflict that has been raging in Manipur for months, Modi declared that “what happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven” and that “the entire country has been shamed” by the attack.
Yet, as many were keen to emphasise, the horrific incident in the footage was not new, isolated or unknown to the authorities. Since violence erupted in the north-eastern state in early May, between the majority Meitei and minority Kuki tribes, activists and academics believe rape and sexual violence has been systematically used as a weapon in “revenge attacks” against women from the Kuki community by Meitei mobs.
“The narrative around what’s really been happening in Manipur – the heinous crimes committed against the Kuki community, the targeting of Kuki women, the use of rape as a weapon by Meitei mobs – all carried out with impunity by these groups, has been kept silent and concealed by the state,” said Kham Khan Suan Hausing, a professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad. “It wasn’t until this video went viral that this overzealous attempt by the state to control the narrative has finally been exposed.”
It was only last week, after the video of the women being abused began trending and the prime minister spoke out, that the police finally made arrests – almost 70 days after the case was filed.
The use of rape as a weapon has been systemic, academics claim. On 4 May, the same day that the women in the video were attacked, two Kuki women, aged 20 and 24, were working in a carwash in a village 20 miles away when a braying, angry Meitei mob, armed with knives and sticks, came hunting for them. Eyewitnesses and relatives told the Observer that the two women were thrashed and gang-raped, goaded on by Meitei women in the mob.
“They were like beasts. I cannot comprehend how someone can be so brutal,” said one co-worker. “The most shocking part was the women in the mob who were shouting slogans: ‘kill, kill these tribals’ while they were being raped.”
The two bloodied and dying women were then dragged out on the road outside the carwash. “I vividly remember their chopped hair splattered with blood in the room,” said a co-worker who was at the scene.
According to another co-worker, police later arrived and picked them up. “Next day, I went to hospital to check on them but I was told by the doctors that they could not be saved,” he said. “Both of them were brutally raped and tortured.”
The mother of one of the victims described her devastation at the news, a pain made worse for the families as they have been unable to collect the bodies of their daughters, who still lie in a mortuary in Imphal, the state capital, as they fear it’s unsafe to travel to the Meitei-dominated area.
The family also alleged the police have done nothing to investigate the case. On the day of the incident, a police report was filed but made no mention of rape, and it wasn’t until the mother of one of the victims filed a new case that the complete events of the murders went on record, according to a police report seen by the Observer.
“Since then, we have not heard back from the police,” said the mother who filed the case. “My daughter and her friend were subjected to brutal torture and were killed in such a painful manner. How can I live in peace?”
Tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities in Manipur go back decades. However, resentments recently became heightened under the current state government, dominated by the Meiteis, which was accused of pursuing policies that discriminated against the Kukis, through alleged attempts to take away their land and cast them as illegal immigrants.
The spark for the violence was a court ruling in March, which granted the Meitei community “scheduled tribe” status, entitling them to the same economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education as the minority Kukis, as well as allowing them to buy land in the hills, where the Kukis predominately live. Fears began to spread among Kukis that they would lose their land and security, and student groups began to protest.
Yet the speed at which the violence suddenly took hold and spread across the state by early May took many by surprise as Meitei mobs quickly mobilised in their thousands and began setting fire to Kuki villages, and Kuki women who fell into their clutches were brutalised.
Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, who recently visited relief camps where thousands displaced in the violence are now living, said she had spoken to several Kuki women who had been attacked.
“From my interactions with the women, I can say with confidence there are many cases of sexual violence,” said Raja. Observers believe that fake news and misinformation that began to spread across social media and WhatsApp on 3 May could have played a critical role, as fake accounts of Meitei women being raped and killed by Kuki mobs, though disproved, began to be widely circulated in a seemingly coordinated campaign.
In response, it appears that Meitei mobs began to target Kuki women in “revenge” rape attacks.
Hoineilhing Sitlhou, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad, who has been studying the cases, said she could see a “clear link” between the systematic spread of fake news, which appeared to be circulated quickly with the deliberate purpose of stirring up ethnic violence, and the rape attacks on Kuki women. “When I heard accounts of these incidents, there was always the justification from the Meitei mobs that ‘you have raped our women so we will do the same to yours’,” she said.
Such was the case for a 23-year-old Kuki university student in Imphal who, in the early hours of 4 May, was captured by a Meitei mob as she tried to make an escape from her university hostel with her brother.
“Some men started tearing my clothes. They were shouting that your people have raped Meitei women and now you should pay for that,” she said.
They beat her and then dragged her to a nearby house. “I begged before them and asked them to let me go. But they were only shouting that revenge for a rape is rape,” she said.
“Six men dragged me then to another room and tore my clothes and did wrong things with me. I still have the scars on my body.”
In a separate incident in May, a young Kuki women described how she was attacked while at an ATM by a Meitei mob who kidnapped her and took her to a Meitei-controlled area, where she was beaten until unconscious. It wasn’t until she escaped and was taken to a hospital that she was informed she had been raped. “I went to the police but felt more threatened there,” she said.
The attacks largely happened in the first few weeks of the conflict, before the state was essentially bifurcated down ethnic lines, with the Meiteis controlling the valley areas and the Kukis in the hills. However, clashes and outbreaks of violence have continued to erupt, and those on the ground say the state is still on the brink of civil war. Confidence in the government resolving the conflict remains low, particularly among the Kukis, who say they can no longer live under the oppressions of a Meitei-dominated state and are now fighting for an independent state.
“The response to that horrific video has proven that if the state steps in and says enough is enough, they can take action and bring a stop to this conflict,” said Khan Suan Hausing. “But as long as the state continues to play a pivotal role in fomenting this violence, then the violence will continue.”
