Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, July 21: Rekha Sharma, the chairperson of the National Commission for Women (NCW), wrote to Manipur’s Chief Secretary and Director General of Police on Friday after taking suo motu cognizance of a video that appeared to show two women being paraded naked by a group of men in Manipur. She asked for a detailed report on the response made to the situation within four days.
The IPC’s sections 376D (gangrape) and 354 (assault or criminal force on a woman with the intent to violate her modesty), among others, have been requested by the commission’s chairperson to be used against those responsible for the FIR.
The event allegedly occurred on May 4, one day following ethnic unrest in Manipur. The police detained four people, including the primary culprit, after a video of the incident went viral.
In a letter to Vineet Joshi, the Chief Secretary of Manipur, the NCW chairman expressed his condemnation of the occurrence, writing, “The matter reported is condemnable in strongest possible words. I, therefore, urge you to look into the matter personally and ensure that strict action is taken against all the accused men and the investigation is accomplished in a timebound manner. A detailed report must be appraised to the Commission within 4 days.”
Ahead of the release of the video showing two tribal women being paraded naked and assaulted earlier, the Supreme Court expressed its “deeply disturbed” response and urged the State and the Centre to take action against the offenders on Thursday.
DY Chandrachud, the Chief Justice of India, along with Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra ruled that it was “simply unacceptable” to use women as instruments of violence.
The bench urged the State and the Centre to evaluate the action taken on the issue after taking suo motu cognizance of a video that surfaced online yesterday.
“Simply unacceptable. Using women as an instrument in an area of communal strife to inflict gender violence is deeply disturbing. This is the grossest of constitutional abuse and human rights violations. We are deeply disturbed by the videos which have emerged. If the government does not act, we will,” CJI said.
The bench said that it needed to be informed of what the governments were doing to bring those responsible for the violence to justice and what they were doing to stop similar tragedies from happening again.
