A year before Kolkata, the Supreme Court took over Manipur rape cases. Did this result in justice?

On July 19 last year, a video of two Kuki women being paraded naked and assaulted by a mob of Meitei men led to nationwide outrage as it revealed how women in Manipur had faced sexual violence as the state slipped into a civil war-like situation.

A day after the video surfaced, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance of the case, calling it “deeply disturbing” – just as it intervened a few days ago in the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College. The 31-year-old medical professional’s death on August 9 has sparked massive protests in the capital of West Bengal.

In subsequent hearings last year, the court went on to order investigation into 17 cases of sexual violence against women and children in Manipur by the Central Bureau of Investigation and said that the investigations would be “monitored by this court”.

Scroll had reported on several of these cases, including the assault on four Kuki women, as well as the alleged rape of a Meitei woman.

The court appointed Dattatray Padsalgikar, former director general of police, Maharashtra, to supervise the special investigative teams or SITs of the CBI formed to probe these cases. The court also constituted a committee headed by former judge Gita Mittal to inquire into the nature of violence against women in Manipur since ethnic clashes broke out between the majority Meitei and Kuki-Zo tribes on May 3, 2023.

A year later, however, lawyers representing several of the women and their families told Scroll, very little progress has been made in these cases despite the Supreme Court’s intervention. A chargesheet has been filed in one case, while there have been no arrests in several other cases. Many of them have not received any update from the SITs or the CBI about the probe.

Scroll contacted Padsalgikar, the former Maharashtra director-general of police supervising the SITs in these cases, asking for a status update. He declined to comment. We also emailed queries to Justice Mittal, who heads the three-member committee formed to probe cases of sexual violence in Manipur. The story will be updated if she responds.

The viral video

On May 4, a day after ethnic clashes erupted between Meiteis and Kukis in Manipur, two women from B Phainom village in Kangpokpi district fled their homes, afraid of approaching Meitei mobs. On the way, the mob caught up with the 44-year-old woman and her 21-year-old neighbour. The younger woman’s father and son were allegedly lynched. Then the mob set on the women, stripped them, and paraded them, even while they were recording their assault.

The video of this violence became viral two months later, prompting the Supreme Court to act. Days after the Supreme Court took up the case, the Manipur police arrested seven “main accused” and handed them over to the CBI.

After the first hearing in July, the court heard all the cases related to Manipur violence again on August 7, 2023 when it noted the “tardy pace” of investigation by the Manipur police and the significant delays between the incidents of heinous crime and the recording of zero FIRs.

Eighteen days later, it asked the chief justice of the Gauhati High Court to nominate judicial officers from Assam, suggesting that it wanted the trial to be held outside Manipur.

Since then, the case has been listed at least 13 times for hearing before the Supreme Court. But there has been no substantive hearing on the sexual assault case, said a lawyer, who is representing the women in the video.

Last year on October 16, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a chargesheet against the six men and one underage boy accused of stripping, parading and gang-raping the women.

“The chargesheet has been filed but the trial has not started,” advocate Nizam Pasha, who also represents the Kuki victims seen in the video, told Scroll. “On this [sexual assault viral video], no hearing has taken place for a long time. They are not updating us on the status of the case.”

The chargesheet revealed that the N Biren Singh government had not granted sanction to prosecute the accused under Section 153A, which is invoked in cases of promoting enmity among different groups on the grounds of race. A government sanction is required in the cases under this broadly-worded provision as a safeguard against misuse.

It also revealed that no other arrests have been made in the case.

One of the main reasons the trial has not proceeded is that the Supreme Court has not decided its location, the lawyer said. The Supreme Court had said that all pre-trial procedures will take place under the jurisdiction and supervision of the Gauhati High Court, according to the lawyer. All the case records were transferred to the CBI judge in Guwahati.

“The next step is that the case has to go for trial,” the lawyer said. “But the trial is itself in limbo as the court has not listed the matter for a hearing on the location of the trial. That’s where it is stuck.”

Manipur chief secretary Vineet Joshi on August 1 last year submitted in an affidavit that the investigation in the viral video case should be completed at the earliest and the trial should also be conducted in a time-bound manner “which must take place outside of Manipur”.

Joshi urged the Supreme Court that “the entire case including trial be ordered to be transferred by Supreme Court in any state out of Manipur.” “The power to transfer the case/trial outside any state is only with this [Supreme] court,” the chief secretary had said. He also asked the court’s directions “to conclude the trial within a period of six months from the date of the filing of chargesheet by the CBI”.

However, 10 months after the chargesheet was filed by the CBI, the trial has not started.

Surprisingly, on March 11 this year, the Supreme Court sought a status report on whether any chargesheet has been filed in the 17 cases. It then directed the central agencies and the state of Manipur to file an updated status report within a period of two weeks.

Since then, there has been no update on the case, as evident in the court orders Scroll has seen. The most recent hearing was on August 5, when the court extended the tenure of the Justice Gita Mittal committee by another six months.

Alleged rape-murder of two Kuki women in Imphal

On May 4, 2023, around 5 pm, a large number of Meitei mobs had started attacking Kukis near a mill in Imphal, according to a police complaint.

Two Kuki women were attacked by one such mob.

According to a first information report lodged by the father of one of the woman, a mob of 100 people “raped, gruesomely tortured and murdered” his daughter and her friend.

The two women – one a 23-year-old woman, and the other a 24-year-old – were both employees at a car wash in the area.

The complainant said the mob included members of radical Meitei groups like Meitei Leepun, Aramboi Tenggol as well as other Meitei youth organisations.

On August 7, 2023, the Supreme Court had transferred the case to the CBI for investigation and prosecution.

A status report, filed by the Manipur government last year in August, had said that 37 witnesses have been examined in the case and the “investigation is in full swing”.

But advocate Vrinda Grover, who represents the families of two young women, said they have absolutely no information on the progress of the case. “The parents don't know if any arrest has been made or if the chargesheet has been filed,” she told Scroll.

Grover added: “I have been told by the families of the two women that the CBI visited them once and recorded the statement of the mother of one woman victim and the father of the other victim in October- November 2023. Since then, they have no idea about the status of the case.”

Over a year later, she added, “their right to justice stands jeopardised.”

Rape, assault of 19-year-old Kuki woman

On May 15, last year, when the violence in Imphal had abated somewhat, a 19-year-old Kuki woman stepped out to draw some money from an ATM.

Since the violence had broken out, she had taken shelter in a Muslim household in Imphal’s New Checkon, waiting for the situation to improve so that she could travel to Kanpokpi district where the rest of her family had escaped.

That day, she was abducted by a gang of men, forced into a car, assaulted in three different locations across Imphal, before she escaped, as Scroll had reported. She had recounted to Scroll that Meitei women were part of the mob that assaulted her, and had egged the men on.

In a status report filed in the Supreme Court by Vineet Joshi, the state chief secretary, on August 1, 2023, had said that 20 witnesses were examined but the place of occurrence of rape was not yet established and the accused persons are still unidentified. “Efforts are afoot to identify the culprits and to cause [sic] arrest,” the chief secretary had said.

A police official posted at Imphal told Scroll that the Manipur police had made one arrest last year and the case was handed over to CBI. “The case is with the CBI now and there are no more details,”said the official, who did not want to be identified.

Status: No information

On May 4, two Kuki women were dragged out of their Nightingale Nursing Institute Hostel in Imphal by a Meitei mob, thrashed and “left to die” by the side of the road outside their hostel.

In June last year, the two women had recounted their experience to Scroll – how two Meitei women were among the mob who entered the hostel looking for Kuki women. Though they initially pretended to be Nagas, their identity cards had revealed their identity.

One of the women, a 19-year-old first-year student, was flown to Delhi and admitted to the intensive care unit of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences’s trauma centre for her injuries.

No arrests have been made in the case, a Manipur police official told Scroll.

Similarly, a first information report had been filed at a police station in Bishnupur district in Manipur’s Imphal valley on August 9 last year, by a Meitei woman who alleged sexual violence during the clashes.

In the FIR, she had said she was sexually assaulted by a mob in Churachandpur district on May 3, the day ethnic clashes had broken out between the Meitei and Kuki communities.

Months later, in October, she had told Scroll how she and her sister were escaping from approaching Kuki mobs with their children that day, when she had fallen on the way – and been attacked by a group of men.

She said she had not confided to anyone about the assault, till she went to the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in August to seek treatment. A doctor who examined her convinced her to file an FIR.

On September 2, Manipur police transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

No arrest has been made in this case, two senior Manipur police officials said.

Statutory violations

A Delhi-based advocate, who has been representing the Kuki-Zo victims, said that the state’s failure to update the families about the cases violates the statutory provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989.

In cases of sexual assault and violence against women from Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste communities, the state has to formulate a scheme so that the victims, their dependents or associated organizations, are given timely information on the status of the investigation, and provided a copy of the chargesheet free of cost, once it has been filed, the advocate said.

“Even if we assume that the SIT and the CBI are functioning very well and they might have filed chargesheets which we don't know, they clearly have not provided any information to any of the victims,” the advocate said.“So, it's a clear statutory violation, even if we ignore the moral obligation the state has towards the victims.”

Advocate Grover pointed out that as the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of how “women's bodies were targeted in the conflict” in Manipur, the “hopes and expectations” of the affected people were raised, that justice will be done and perpetrators held accountable.

“A year has since passed, and Manipur remains troubled. It is a challenge and a responsibility to develop mechanisms to ensure that the initial suo motu has a clear, substantive and time-bound follow-up,” she added. “So that the victims’ families, most of whom live very far from Delhi and many of whom are still in relief camps, don't lose hope or give up on justice.”