NEW DELHI: Furious women set fire to the houses of two Indian men accused of parading two women naked in a state where months of ethnic clashes have left at least 120 dead, images showed on Friday.

A clip went viral on Wednesday showing two women walking naked along a street while being jeered at and harassed by a mob reportedly from the Meitei community.

Violence erupted in the northeastern state of Manipur between the mainly Christian Kuki and the predominantly Hindu Meitei in May over job quotas and land rights, and intermittent clashes have continued since.

The emergence of footage of the women’s humiliation — which happened in May — triggered outrage across the country, with PM Narendra Modi saying it had “shamed India”.

Police arrested four suspects on Thursday, and the same day a group of women activists threw stacks of hay into the house of one of the men in Imphal and set it on fire. As the fire raged, the women — from the Meitei community, like the accused — broke down the walls and roof of the house with sticks.

On Friday, another mob of women destroyed the house of a second accused, reducing it to ash and bars, photographs showed.

The video of the naked women sparked protests across India on Friday, with demonstrators calling for the state’s chief minister to step down over the delay in taking action.

“Can normal people do these things?... Even cats, dogs, animal(s) never committed these kind of filthy act,” said one demonstrator near Imphal, where hundreds of women gathered to protest. “This is not even how human beings treat other human,” she said.

The Supreme Court warned Modi’s government on Thursday that if it does not act, “we will”.

Authorities in Manipur, led by the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said police had taken action as soon as the video surfaced on social media.

The state’s chief minister N. Biren Singh tweeted on Thursday that a probe was underway, promising “strict action... against all the perpetrators, including considering the possibility of capital punishment”.

The Manipur violence came after the Kuki community protested Meitei demands for reserved public job quotas and college admissions as a form of affirmative action, stoking long-held fears that they might also be allowed to acquire land in areas currently reserved for tribal groups.

In a report to the SC in June, the Manipur Tribal Forum said many acts of violence had not been investigated by state authorities.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2023