Nearly two years after she was allegedly kidnapped and gang-raped during the early days of Manipur’s ethnic violence, a 20-year-old Kuki woman died at a government hospital in Churachandpur district on January 11 — without seeing any arrests in her case, according to her family.
The woman’s death brings back into focus the hundreds of cases of sexual violence during the Manipur conflict that remain uninvestigated, even as the state remains divided along ethnic lines with more than 258 people killed and 60,000 displaced since May 2023.
“No arrests have been made and neither the Manipur police nor the CBI has contacted us with updates on the investigation,” the woman’s mother said on Sunday. The case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) along with several other cases related to the ethnic clashes, but the family has received no information about progress, she said.
Manipur police and the CBI did not respond to requests for a comment.
A senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a zero FIR was registered and the case was handed over to the CBI, but it was not clear whether any accused had been arrested.
The woman, 18 at the time of the assault in May 2023, had been receiving treatment for physical injuries and complications including uterine fibrosis across hospitals in Nagaland, Assam and Manipur. She died at Singhat hospital in Churachandpur. The family said she had also been suffering from depression and post-trauma stress since the incident.
{{/usCountry}}The woman, 18 at the time of the assault in May 2023, had been receiving treatment for physical injuries and complications including uterine fibrosis across hospitals in Nagaland, Assam and Manipur. She died at Singhat hospital in Churachandpur. The family said she had also been suffering from depression and post-trauma stress since the incident.
{{/usCountry}}Her case is among the thousands of brutal attacks and murders that ethnic ultras unleashed in the state, with human costs piling up on both sides: the Kuki-dominated hills and the Meitei-dominated valley. Among such cases was that of two Kuki women, whose videos of being paraded undressed by a mob before they were raped became one of the defining tragedies of the conflict. Six people were arrested and charged after the video came to light.
According to the family and the FIR (which HT has seen), the woman who died last week was working at a beauty salon in Imphal when she was taken hostage around 5pm on May 15, 2023, from an ATM in the New Checkon area by four men in plain clothes. She was then taken to multiple locations and eventually to a hilltop where three of the four men allegedly raped her.
The woman fell off a creek and reached a road at the bottom of the hillock where an auto rickshaw driver rescued her and took her to Bishnupur police station, and then to Imphal the same night. She managed to reach Kangpokpi district, a Kuki-majority area, early on May 16 and then to a hospital in Kohima, Nagaland, given the critical nature of her injuries.
The family registered a zero FIR at Kangpokpi police station on July 21, 2023, under sections 354, 307, 364, 376, 376D, 506 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code and section 3 of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
“We received some monetary compensation through the Kangpokpi district administration, but I am not sure whether it was from the state government or the Centre,” the mother said. The woman was the third child in the family with two elder brothers and a younger sister. Her father was employed with the Imphal Municipal Corporation but his services were terminated without reason in September 2023, the family said.