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correction
A previous version of this article stated that a May 18 complaint to police showed that the women were apprehended by police. The complaint states that the women were rescued by police. This article has been corrected.
Amid months of violence and government-imposed internet outages in northeastern India, an alarming showing the sexual assault of two women went viral Wednesday, sparking public outcry over two months after it was filmed.
Fighting between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mostly Christian Kuki minority groups in the northeastern state of Manipur this year has left more than a hundred people dead, thousands of residents displaced and countless buildings burned to the ground. Internet outages — meant to stem the spread of incendiary rhetoric and rumors — have become the Indian government’s approach to quelling the ethnic clashes that spiraled out of control after protests led to violence, which in turn prompted revenge attacks.
The crisis drew renewed attention this week after a ghastly circulated on social media in which a mob of men from the Meitei community paraded two women, who were Kukis, naked through a crowd of clothed men who assaulted them. The attack took place a day after the ethnic conflagration erupted across Manipur on May 3, according to local media.
India’s northeast racked by ethnic unrest partly fueled by Myanmar crisis
In a May 18 complaint to police viewed by The Washington Post, the victims allege that “unknown miscreants” stormed their village with guns. While attempting to escape, the women, along with several other people who were accompanying them, were rescued by police. But later, the group was intercepted by a mob, at which point, the victims allege, the attack began. The mob allegedly killed the men of the family, sexually assaulted the three women and gang-raped one of the women, according to the police complaint.
“The police were there with the mob which was attacking our village,” one of the victims told the Indian Express. “The police picked us up from near home, and took us a little away from the village and left us on the road with the mob. We were given to them by police.”
In his first comments thus far about the ongoing conflict in Manipur, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to reporters outside the Indian Parliament before proceedings began Thursday, calling the assaults “shameful” and an “insult” to the country. Later in the day, opposition parties disrupted parliamentary proceedings arguing that the Modi government was shying away from a longer discussion on Manipur.
“Manipur is burning. Women are raped and paraded naked. The prime minister is giving a statement outside. It is an insult to the Parliament,” said Mallikarjun Kharge, Indian National Congress president and opposition leader in the Parliament’s upper house.
Earlier, the Indian government ordered social media platforms including Google, Meta, YouTube and Twitter to take down all posts featuring the clip, including those with blurred or blackened screenshots, according to local reports. Posts made by journalists on their accounts were also affected by the sweeping orders.
Previously, rhetoric from members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had stoked ethnic tensions in the region. Earlier this year, the chief minister of Manipur, Nongthombam Biren Singh, a BJP member who is Meitei, blamed local problems on the influx of refugees from Myanmar who fled to Manipur after the neighboring country’s 2021 coup. These refugees share ties with the Kukis.
“Chin-Kuki brothers,” Singh said in a March television interview, “are encroaching everywhere and planting poppy and doing drugs business.”
Last month, the chief minister took to Twitter to lash out at critics calling for his resignation. In a tweet that was later deleted, he asked one Kuki critic if he was from Myanmar.
Many refugees from Myanmar are part of the Chin tribes, which share ethnic roots with the Kukis. Some members of the Meitei majority, meanwhile, have decried the bestowal of certain legal protections on tribal groups like the Kukis.
The Supreme Court of India on Thursday ordered the BJP governments in New Delhi and the state to take swift action in the case, describing it as the “grossest of human rights and constitutional violation.” Shortly after, police arrested four men in Manipur for their involvement in the case.
In comments made on Thursday to the TV channel India Today, the chief minister defended his government’s prolonged internet restrictions. “Hundreds of similar cases took place here. That is why we have banned the internet,” he said.
