Autopsy findings suggestive of “third-degree” torture using nails and burns inflicted while the victim was alive accentuated on Wednesday the horror of a 31-year-old mother of three being allegedly raped before being burned to death by armed intruders inside her village home in Manipur’s Jiribam on Nov 7, leading to a sequence of other violent happenings in the district since.
The autopsy at Silchar Medical College in neighbouring Assam couldn’t ascertain if the woman, a tribal resident of the Zairawn village, was sexually assaulted before being killed as her charred body ruled out any chance of doctors collecting a vaginal smear.
The FIR registered at Jiribam quotes her husband as saying she was raped before being “brutally killed” in “our residence”. The perpetrators, who plundered and set 17 homes ablaze in Zairawn that night, are suspected to be members of a valley-based outfit.
Manipur woman’s body 99% burnt, even bones charred: Report
The autopsy report mentions “a wound in the back of right thigh” and a “metallic nail embedded in the medial aspect of left thigh”. The body was found to have 99% burns, with even the bone fragments charred. “The right upper limb, parts of both lower limbs, and the facial structure are missing,” the report notes.
Most of the other details are too graphic to reproduce, indicative of the torture and pain the woman was subjected to before flames enveloped her along with the home she, her husband and children lived in. It isn’t clear where the victim’s husband and children were when the assailants arrived.
Kuki-Zo organisations have condemned the woman’s killing as “barbaric”, with tempers flaring over security agencies being unable to identify the killers.
The Indigenous Tribes Advocacy Committee of Pherzawl and Jiribam requested central intervention to safeguard the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people of the twin tribal-dominant districts. The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, a conglomerate of tribal communities of Churachandpur, warned of more turmoil if the assailants weren’t arrested.
The woman’s alleged rape and the manner of her killing harks back to the worst of Manipur’s theatre of violence since May last year, including instances of women being stripped, paraded naked, gang-raped and killed in the initial weeks of the still-raging ethnic strife. The hill-valley divide caused by acts of violence by both sides continues to keep hundreds of displaced families confined to relief shelters in Jiribam and elsewhere in the state.
Manipur Police said they took the tribal woman’s charred remains to Silchar, less than 50km from Jiribam, instead of Imphal for autopsy because it was purportedly “very much inconvenient to transport the body by road via NH-37 due to ongoing ethnic crisis”.