'Shameful': India's Modi slams mob assault of two women in Manipur
The Indian prime minister, who had not made any public remarks about the trouble in the state ruled by his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, spoke a day after videos showing women being molested in Manipur surfaced.
“The guilty will not be spared. What has happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” Modi told reporters on Thursday. / Photo: AP
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condemned the sexual assault of women in Manipur state as "shameful" and promised tough action, his first comments on ethnic clashes in the remote northeast which have killed at least 125 people.
“The guilty will not be spared. What has happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” Modi told reporters on Thursday ahead of a parliamentary session in his first public comments related to the Manipur conflict.
A video showing the assaults triggered massive outrage and went viral late on Wednesday despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists being locked out in the remote state.
The video shows two naked women being surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field.
The violence depicted in the video was emblematic of the near-civil war in Manipur since May, as mobs rampage through villages killing people and torching houses.
Ethnic violence
The ethnic violence was sparked by an affirmative action controversy which saw Christian Kukis protest a demand from the mostly Hindu Meiteis of a special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Kukis and other tribal groups and get a share of government jobs.
The clashes have persisted despite the army's presence in Manipur, a state of 3.7 million people tucked in the mountains on India's border with Myanmar that is now divided in two ethnic zones.
The two warring factions have also formed armed militias, and isolated villages are still raked with gunfire. More than 60,000 people have fled to packed relief camps.
Police said the assault on the two women happened on May 4, a day after the violence started in the state.
The two women are from the Kuki-Zo community, the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, a tribal organisation in Manipur, said in a statement.
The state police have made the first arrest in the case, Manipur's Chief Minister Biren Singh said on Twitter, without specifying the number of people who were apprehended.
Last week the European Parliament adopted a resolution that called on Indian authorities to take action to stop the violence in Manipur and protect religious minorities, especially Christians.
India’s foreign ministry condemned the resolution by calling it an “interference” in its internal affairs.
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