IRON LADY: Modi avoids owning responsibility on Manipur fi les

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Civil rights activist Irom Sharmila on Saturday expressed concern about the “inhuman” nature of the ethnic conflict in Manipur in the backdrop of the viral video which showed two Kuki tribal women were paraded naked and molested, with one of them being raped.

She told The News Minute that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had shirked his responsibility and hadn’t intervened at the right time.

Sharmila, dubbed the “Iron Lady of Manipur” had undertaken a 16-year-long fast to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives security forces impunity from being tried for crimes unless sanctioned by the Union government.

However, it hadn’t yielded the desired results. “Even before my hunger strike, the army had gang-raped a young tribal woman. There has been no punishment for the rapists. It is really worse this time, really inhuman. The Prime Minister has been silent, and when he finally spoke, there was nothing about a solution, nothing about bringing normalcy back in Manipur,” Sharmila said.

“He (Modi) is avoiding his responsibility as a Union leader of all these federal states. He needs to call all the 60 MLAs of the Manipur government and take a call on how to deal with their respective constituencies. It is too late already,” she added.