Mother of three brutally tortured before being set on fire in Manipur: Autopsy | India News – Times of India

Autopsy findings indicating ‘third-degree’ torture with nails and burns, inflicted while the victim was still alive, on Wednesday accentuated the horror of a 31-year-old mother of three who was allegedly raped before being burnt to death by armed intruders at her village home in Manipur’s Jiribam on November 7, which has since led to a series of other violent events in the district.
The autopsy at the Silchar Medical College in neighboring Assam could not determine whether the woman, a tribal resident of Zairawn village, had been sexually abused before she was killed because her charred body ruled out any chance of doctors taking a vaginal swab.
The FIR registered in Jiribam quotes her husband as saying she was raped before being “brutally murdered” at “our residence”. The perpetrators, who looted and burned seventeen houses in Zairawn that night, are suspected of being members of a gang in the valley.
Body of Manipur woman 99% burnt, even bones charred: report
The autopsy report notes “a wound to the back of the right thigh” and a “metal nail embedded in the medial aspect of the 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 said.
Most other details are too graphic to depict, indicative of the torture and pain the woman was subjected to before the flames enveloped her, along with the house in which she, her husband and children lived. It is not clear where the victim’s husband and children lived. were when the attackers arrived.
Kuki-Zo organizations have condemned the woman’s murder as “barbaric”, with emotions running high as security forces fail to identify the killers.
The Committee for the Advocacy of Indigenous Tribes of Pherzawl and Jiribam requested central intervention to protect the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people in the two tribal-dominant districts. The Forum of Indigenous Tribal Leadersa conglomerate of tribal communities in Churachandpur, warned of more unrest if the attackers were not arrested.
The alleged rape of the woman and the manner in which she was killed harkens back to Manipur’s worst theater of violence since May last year, including examples of women being stripped, paraded naked, gang raped and murdered in first weeks of the still raging ethnic conflict. conflict. The divide between hill and valley, caused by acts of violence on both sides, is trapping hundreds of displaced families in shelters in Jiribam and elsewhere in the state.
Manipur police said they took the woman’s charred remains to Silchar, less than 50 km from Jiribam, instead of Imphal for autopsy as it was reportedly “very inconvenient to transport the body by road via NH-37 due to the ongoing ethnic crisis”.