Tragic torture and murder of Jiribam woman shocks Manipur community

Guwahati: The autopsy findings of the 31-year-old mother of three, who was killed by armed intruders at her village home in Manipur’s Jiribam district on Thursday, have revealed that the assailants subjected her to ‘third degree’ torture and ‘burns’ while she she was still alive, which together caused her death.
Based on the FIR filed by the woman’s husband, Jiribam police also registered a case of rape, but doctors from the forensic medicine department of Silchar Medical College and Hospital in Assam, who conducted the autopsy, could not obtain a “vaginal swab” collection to find if there was a violation, as “the body parts were completely charred and unrecognizable.”
The man stated in the FIR that his wife was “brutally murdered” after she was sexually assaulted at “our residence” in Zairawn village, recalling the horrors of the first few weeks of last year’s ethnic conflict, marked by gangs chased, stripped and raped women, came back to life. in various places in the residual state.
The doctors were also unable to collect viscera for chemical analysis because “most were charred and unrecognizable or missing.”
The post mortem report further states that the woman suffered 99% burns. The doctors noted that the body, which was covered with polythene and blanket, was completely charred “along with burnt bone fragments and her right upper limbs and parts of both lower limbs and facial structure were missing.”
Doctors also found a wound across the back of the victim’s right thigh, while a metal nail “was found embedded over the medial aspect of the left thigh.”
Police took the woman’s charred body to Silchar for forensic tests as it was “very difficult to transport the body from Jirbam to Imphal by road via NH-37 due to the ongoing ethnic crisis.”
The attackers, believed to be from the valley, have not been identified so far. Several Kuki-Zo organizations have condemned the act, saying it was “barbaric.”
The Advocacy Committee for Indigenous Tribes of Pherzawl and Jiribam requested central intervention to protect the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people in the two tribal-dominant districts. The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, a conglomerate of tribal communities of Churachandpur, issued a statement demanding immediate arrest of those responsible for the crime.