In a northeastern state where months of ethnic conflict have claimed at least 120 lives, a group of enraged women burned on fire the home of an Indian man who is accused of paradeing two women naked, according to video released on Friday.
In a video that went viral on Wednesday, two women purportedly from the Kuki tribal tribe were seen going down the street naked while being harassed and jeered at by a crowd that appeared to be Meitei residents.
Intermittent conflicts have continued since May, when violence broke out between the primarily Christian Kuki and the primarily Hindu Meitei over job quotas and land rights.
The May incident involving the women’s humiliation sparked indignation across the nation, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi declaring that it had “shamed India.”
On the same day when a group of women activists set fire to one of the men’s Imphal home with bundles of hay, the police detained four individuals.
The women, who were Meitei community members like the accused, tore down the house’s walls and roof with sticks as the fire burned.
However, the Meitei have a history of women’s activism, with women playing a more important part in society than anywhere else. India is largely orthodox, conservative, and patriarchal.
The footage of the naked women provoked demonstrations on Friday across India, with protesters demanding the resignation of the state’s chief minister for the lack of action.
“Can normal people do these things?… Even cats, dogs, animal(s) never committed these kind of filthy act,” said one demonstrator near Imphal, where hundreds of women gathered to protest.
“This is not even how human beings treat other human,” she said.
The Indian Supreme Court issued a threat to the Modi administration on Thursday: “We will” intervene if it does not.
The ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Manipur said that as soon as the video appeared on social media, police had reacted.
A “thorough investigation” was under way, the state’s chief minister N. Biren Singh tweeted Thursday.
“We will ensure strict action is taken against all the perpetrators, including considering the possibility of capital punishment,” he added.
The Kuki community resisted Meitei demands for reserved public job quotas and college admissions as a form of affirmative action, igniting long-standing concerns that they could also be permitted to purchase land in areas currently set aside for indigenous tribes. This led to the unrest in Manipur.
Tens of thousands of people fled to government-run camps after their homes and churches were set on fire.
Manipur Tribal Forum, a civil society organization, claimed in a thorough report submitted to the Supreme Court in June that numerous horrible incidents of violence, like as rape and beheading, had gone uninvestigated by state officials.
One such incidence purportedly showed a BJP lawmaker’s aide in the state carrying the severed head of a victim on Twitter on Thursday. It quickly vanished from the platform.
