Jiribam woman, mother of 3, died of ‘third degree’ torture: Autopsy report

Guwahati: The autopsy findings of the 31-year-old mother of three children, who was killed in her village home in Manipur's Jiribam district Thursday by armed intruders, have revealed that assailants subjected her to "third degree" torture and "burns" while she was still alive which together caused her death.Based on the FIR lodged by the woman's husband, Jiribam Police registered a case of rape, too, but doctors of forensic medicine department of Silchar Medical College and Hospital in Assam, who conducted the post mortem, could not collect "vaginal smear" to find out whether any violation was committed as "the body parts were completely charred and not recognizable."The husband stated in the FIR that his wife was "brutally murdered" after being sexually assaulted at "our residence" in Zairawn village, reviving the horrors of the first few weeks of the ethnic conflict last year marked by mobs hounding, stripping and raping women at several places in the restive state.The doctors also could not collect visceras for chemical analysis as "most were charred and unrecognizable or missing".The post mortem report further states the woman suffered 99% burns. The doctors noted that the body, which was brought covered in a polythene and blanket, was completely charred "along with burnt bone fragments and her right upper limb and parts of both lower limbs and the facial structure found missing."Doctors also found a wound over the back of right thigh of the victim while a metallic nail "was found embedded over the medial aspect of left thigh."Police brought the woman's charred body to Silchar for forensic tests as it was "very much inconvenient to transport the body from Jirbam to Imphal by road via NH-37 due to the ongoing ethnic crisis." The assailants, suspected to be from the valley, haven't been identified so far. Several Kuki-Zo organizations have condemned the act saying it was "barbaric."The Indigenous Tribes Advocacy Committee of Pherzawl and Jiribam requested central intervention to safeguard the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people of the twin 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.
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