(Trigger warning: Mentions of rape, violence, sexual assault)
A zero FIR has been filed against "unknown miscreants and Meira Paibes" over the abduction, assault, and rape of an 18-year-old Kuki woman in Manipur.
The Quint has accessed a copy of the FIR, which states that the survivor was "handed over to four armed men wearing black clothes."
The charges include sections 354 (outraging a woman's modesty), 307 (attempt to murder), 364 (kidnap), 376 (gang rape), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and relevant sections of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The FIR states that on the evening of 15 May, around 5 pm, four men abducted her to Wangkhei Ayangpali where they punched and hit her, after which the Meira Paibis were called. She then heard one of the ladies saying that the ‘Arambai Tengol’ must be called, and then four armed men arrived wearing black shirts "with some logos on their back." Then she was taken away and hit by the butt of the guns that the attackers were carrying.
She was raped on a hilltop by three out of the four armed men. They were arguing about whether they should kill her or not because it would attract police attention. "I looked around and fell on the feet of one of these men who looked the eldest and started begging for my life," she pleaded, according to the FIR.
"I even promised them that I will never return to Imphal, just let me go; I want to meet my parents. Then they put me in car again and they drove me around to look for a better location to kill me. After driving around for a while, they stopped the car again in hilly top area. They dragged me out of the car and starting physically assaulting me by kicking, slapping, punching etc. One of the blows on my face with the butt of the gun was so hard that I blacked out for a while. My eyes opened when I felt drizzle of rain on my face," the FIR further stated.
As one of them was trying to turn the car around, it hit the survivor by accident who then fell from the hilltop. She was then found by an autorickshaw driver who hid her under a pile of vegetables that he was carrying, and dropped her to New Lambulane area in Imphal.
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