Deadly ethnic clashes in India’s northeast rocked the country's Parliament for a second straight day Friday, with the opposition blocking proceedings and demanding the sacking of the top elected official of Manipur state, where more than 130 people have been killed since early May.
The official, Biren Singh, belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.
The opposition shouted slogans demanding that all other parliamentary business be postponed and that a debate be launched on the violence, starting with a statement by Modi. On Thursday, Modi broke more than two months of public silence over the ethnic clashes, telling reporters that mob assaults on two women as they were paraded naked were unforgivable, but he did not refer directly to the larger violence.
The government refused the opposition demand that Modi participate in a debate, and presiding officer Rajendra Aggarwal adjourned the lower house of Parliament until Monday.
The near-civil war in Manipur was sparked when Christian Kukis protested a demand by the mostly Hindu Meiteis for a special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Kukis and other tribal groups and get a guaranteed share of government jobs.
The state government, meanwhile, announced the arrest of four suspects in the assaults on the two women. Rajiv Singh, the state's director-general of police, said police were carrying out raids to arrest other suspects.
Biren Singh, the top elected official in Manipur, said some protesters attacked and set on fire the house of one of the suspects in a village in the state.
A video showing the assaults triggered massive outrage and was widely shared on social media late Wednesday despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists being locked out in the remote state. It shows the two naked women surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field.
“The guilty will not be spared. What has happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” Modi told reporters Thursday.
Opposition Congress party president MallikarjunKharge said Modi should make a statement inside Parliament, not just on one incident but on the continuing violence in the state that made its BJP-led government look “absolutely helpless and remorseless.”
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 into two ethnic zones. The 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 occurred May 4, a day after the violence started in the state. According to a police complaint filed on May 18, the two women were part of a family attacked by a mob that killed its two male members. The complaint alleges rape and murder by “unknown miscreants.”
The victims are from the Kuki-Zo community, according to the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum, a tribal organization in Manipur. One of them told The Associated Press that the men who assaulted the two women were part of a Meitei mob that had earlier torched their village.
Biren Singh, the state official, said on Thursday that “A thorough investigation is currently underway and we will ensure strict action is taken against all the perpetrators, including considering the possibility of capital punishment. Let it be known, there is absolutely no place for such heinous acts in our society.”
