In Manipur shocker, a litany of lapses by govt and police

The outrage was immediate. The Opposition reacted strongly. Union minister Smriti Irani called CM Biren Singh. On Thursday, the police made the first 4 arrests

Sometime on Wednesday afternoon, a 30-second video began popping up on social media timelines, on internet searches, on WhatsApp groups. Manipur has been in the throes of ethnic violence for over two-and-a-half months, and despite an internet ban since May 3 — the day the attacks first began — there have been photos and videos that capture the carnage. But this was different, chilling in its brutality. For 30 seconds, the video showed a rabid group of men hooting and applauding as two women, stripped and distraught, were paraded through a field, constantly heckled and molested and groped as they walked.

Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh addresses the media in Imphal on Thursday. (PTI)

One of them was even allegedly gang-raped, according to an FIR of the incident filed in May.

For once, the outrage was immediate — and universal. The Opposition reacted strongly, condemning the state of affairs in Manipur that allowed such heinous acts with impunity. The Union women and child development minister Smriti Irani telephoned chief minister Biren Singh, who was forced to react at 10.44am, saying that a thorough investigation was underway, the police had taken “suo motu” cognisance and would ensure strict action against all perpetrators. By Thursday afternoon, the Manipur Police had made its first arrest, 32-year-old Huirem Herodas Meitei, one of the men in the video, and one holding one of the two women, a deathgrip on her body that was shaking with fear. Three more people were arrested by the evening.

It took less than 24 hours for the arrest. Except that it didn’t.

The crime took place on May 4. A first information report based on the initial complaint was filed on May 18. It was forwarded to the police station on June 21. And the first arrest came on Thursday, with CM Singh’s response suggesting that he came to know of the incident only from the video though he also holds the home portfolio.

In many ways, the Manipur government’s speed of purpose in carrying out an arrest laid bare their complete lack of action and the series of lapses that allowed a veil of silence, one that lasted 77 days.

The crime

On May 4, a Kuki village in Manipur’s Thoubal district came under attack from suspected Meitei groups, such as the Meitei Lepun, Kangleipak Kanba Lup (KKL), Arambai Tenggol and World Meitei Council, that entered the village at around 3pm with sophisticated weapons. The attack came a day after Manipur first started to be in the throes of ethnic violence; violence that has since left at least 150 dead, over 300 injured, and over 50,000 displaced.

Clashes first broke out in Churachandpur town after Kuki groups called for protests against a proposed tweak to the state’s reservation matrix, granting scheduled tribe (ST) status to the Meitei community. Violence quickly engulfed the state where ethnic fault lines run deep, displacing tens of thousands of people who fled burning homes and neighbourhoods into jungles, often across state borders. The authorities quickly clamped a curfew and suspended internet, pumping in additional security forces to force a break in the spiraling clashes. Internet is still not back in the state.

The statement of the village chief says that the mob carrying weapons such as AKs, SLRs, INSAS and .303 rifles ran riot; the mob “vandalised all the houses and burnt them to the ground after looting all the moveable properties and cash including furniture, electronic items, utensils, clothes, grains etc leaving all of us homeless”, the FIR says.

Officials admitted that they had been aware that the village was sensitively placed, and around 90 of the 150 residents had already been evacuated by police and security personnel. “Most of these villagers are living with the camps run by the government,” an official, who did not want to be named, said.

When the mob attacked the village, the FIR said, a group of five villagers, two men and three women, fled towards the nearby forests. Here, the village chief who is the complainant in the case said, they were rescued by personnel of the Nongpok Sekmai police team. But the police team was “blocked on the way by a mob” and the five “snatched” from the custody of the police team near Toubul, from a spot from where the Nongpok Sekmai police station is all of 2km away. The nearest Assam Rifles outpost is 3km away.

The FIR — registered on May 18 based on a complaint filed by the village chief — said the family of five fled to a forest to escape an armed mob that entered their village and vandalised houses. But when the family was on their way to a police station, the mob waylaid them and snatched them from police custody — though in statements to some media outlets, one of the two women said they were handed over by the police to the mob — and first killed a man, before assaulting the women and parading them naked. HT has seen a copy of the FIR. One of the women was later gang raped, the FIR said, adding that the mob also killed her 19-year-old brother for trying to intervene.

The mob, according to the FIR, first killed the 56-year-old man near a paddy field. They then forced the three women, aged 21, 42 and 52, to strip. They were paraded, and the 21-year-old was allegedly gang raped. When the woman’s younger brother, all of 19, tried to intervene, he was murdered too. At some point, the three women managed to flee, walked for almost seven kilometres and reached a hospital in Tenugoupal. All through this time, despite obvious knowledge that they were in crisis, no backup police team reached the spot.

Lapses, and more lapses

Every legal process after that point was delayed. The first complaint, that formed the basis of a “zero FIR”, a process that enables the registration of a case in a jurisdiction away from the original scene of the crime, was registered at the Saikul police station in Kakngpokpi district on May 18. The complaint was detailed, and contained sections of the Indian Penal Code involving robbery with deadly weapon, kidnapping, assault, rape, and murder.

It took one month and three days for the police to transfer the case to the Nongpok Sekmai police station on June 21. The FIR seems to admit the delay. At one point, it says, “due to communal tension the case could not be reported in time”.

The first arrest took after another month, only on Thursday morning, on July 20 — following the outrage created by the video.

Senior police officials have admitted that they know where the mob, numbering between 900 and 1000, came from. “The women and the village head have told the police that the men involved in the incident were from nearby villages,” a police officer said, asking not to be named.

K Meghachandra Singh, superintendent of police, said on Wednesday night, “The state police is making all out efforts to arrest the culprits at the earliest.”

Former DGP and BSF chief Prakash Singh said that the Manipur police had the burden of “winning back the trust of the people”.

“I am not privy to why no action was taken all these weeks if the complaint was filed before. But during the insurgency in Punjab, the government sent officers like Julio Ribeiro and KPS Gill to lead the force and ensure police did the job that they are mandated to do. Manipur police need a face, a person who can bring back normalcy and be seen as fair to all groups. I am yet to read about any police officer, again whom action was taken despite the fact that such a large number of arms and ammunition was stolen from armoury,” Singh said.

His reference is to the fact that during the course of violence, mobs across different districts broke into armouries of different police stations and other military units in two phases. The first breach happened during the first week of violence that started on May 3, and the second during the weekend of May 27 and 28.

Manipur Police, in their assessment of the loss of weapons and ammunition, noted that at least 500,000 pieces of ammunition and 3,500 weapons were stolen. Of this, police and security agencies have jointly recovered at least 953 weapons and 13,351 ammunition since then.

Experts said that if information, such as this video, had not been entirely suppressed, the same arrest that took a day after outrage was generated online, could have essentially taken place earlier. Prasanth Sugathan, legal director of the Software Freedom Law Centre said, “A complete internet ban in the state for the past two-and-a-half months means that there is no effective communication to or from the state. Now, the Supreme Court and government authorities have taken cognisance of the incidents in the state, thanks to this viral video and the outrage that ensued. The internet shutdown has only helped in keeping everything under wraps. We do not even know whether there are more incidents like this.”

On Thursday, in a telephonic interview with the TV channel India Today, chief minister Biren Singh seemed to admit as much. “There are hundreds of FIRs like this. That is why the internet is banned,” he said.

That would seem to suggest that the state will act only when a video emerges, and provokes outrage.

“A functioning communication network would have ensured more transparency, keeping the citizens and the arms of the government aware of the human rights abuses happening in the state. This would have, at least, ensured that they acted with urgency to bring the state back to normalcy. Most people in the state may not even be aware of the developments today, such as the Prime Minister speaking about the issue and the Supreme Court taking suo moto cognisance of it,” Sugathan added.

But all of that has happened. The Prime Minister has finally spoken on Manipur; the Chief Justice of India has warned of “stepping in” if the state and the Centre do not act; and Opposition parties have helped up business in Parliament (which opened for the new session on Thursday), demanding an explanation from the PM.

The government may have succeeded in getting social media platforms to take down the video — but it has brought the issue the attention it deserves.