Tribal woman ‘raped’ & burnt alive at home in Manipur’s Jiribam dist

Guwahati: A tribal woman aged 31, mother of three, was allegedly assaulted and violated before being immolated by armed perpetrators at her home in Jiribam district of Manipur on Thursday night.Police are in the process of transferring the victim's remains to Silchar in neighbouring Assam for forensic tests because of inadequate facilities back home. SP (Jiribam) has communicated to the district magistrate that despite the availability of post-mortem facilities in Imphal, it is "very much inconvenient to transport the dead body from Jirbam to Imphal by road via NH-37 due to the ongoing ethnic crisis in the state."Jiribam police station has registered a case on an FIR lodged by the victim's husband, citing violations, including rape and murder based on racial, communal, and gender grounds, property destruction and criminal trespass after sunset under the BNS. The man's FIR says his wife "was brutally murdered (raped and burnt alive)" at "our residence".The assailants, suspected to be from the valley and armed with deadly weapons, invaded the tribal settlement in Jiribam's Zairawn village, terrorising residents before fatally attacking the helpless victim. They subsequently set ablaze 17 dwellings after random gunfire and plundered valuables."This barbaric act serves as yet another chilling reminder of the relentless ethnic-cleansing campaign," declared Hmar Inpui, the apex body of the Hmar tribe. The Indigenous Tribes Advocacy Committee (Pherzawl and Jiribam), too, denounced the attack on Zairawn village and requested the Centre's intervention to safeguard the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar people in Jiribam and Pherzawl districts. The Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum (ITLF), a conglomerate of recognised tribes in Churachandpur, confirmed the discovery of the victim's charred remains inside the family's residence in the morning.
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