'They are fighting it out, but they have deeply traumatised; they are alive and they are carrying on in life.'
Sushmita Dev, the Trinamool Congress's Rajya Sabha MP, was among the 21 MPs who visited Manipur on July 29 and 30 to meet the people in the strife-torn state and express the nation's solidarity with the two Kuki women who were paraded naked on May 4 after forcibly taking them from a police station and then allegedly raped.
Dev tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com what the two women told her, the DMK's Kanimozhi Karunanidhi and the Congress' Phulo Devi Netam.
What crucial did you observe when you were in Manipur on the 29th and the 30th of July?
There's no improvement in the situation (in Manipur). Women and children and people in the relief camps are only increasing.
The weapons that were (looted and are now) in the public domain have not been recovered. And people of neither factions have any faith in the state administration or have any faith in the chief minister of Manipur (N Biren Singh) or the public administration.
You met the women who were allegedly gang raped. What did they tell you?
Kanimozhi (Karunanidhi, the DMK's Rajya Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu), Phulo Devi (Netam, the Congress's Rajya Sabha MP from Chhattisgarh) and I briefly met them. We just heard them out.
They were deeply disappointed with the role of the police in the entire incident. They also feel that the government has taken no action against those (police) officers (who allowed the mobs to take away these women from their custody on May 4 and then paraded them naked and allegedly gang raped them) till today.
They are fighting it out, but they have deeply traumatised; they are alive and they are carrying on in life. That shows how bold they are.
Frankly, they were crying like anything (when we met them).
Did they have any message for Prime Minister Modi who is yet to make any statement on Manipur in Parliament?
They are saying that a prime minister and a home minister of India must have intelligence report about what is happening (in Manipur even) before the video (of the May 4 parading was leaked); that they should have known what's happening in Manipur.
They don't believe for a second that the prime minister and the home minister didn't know what happened (on May 4, when the two Kuki women were publicly paraded naked and allegedly gang raped).
Today, you and I can say we don't know what was happening (in Manipur since May 3 when the violence first broke out) because we don't have access to that kind of information (but the prime minister and home minister would have that kind of information).
These were their words.
They (the women) are very intelligent. They understand what's happening.
Do you expect the prime minister to make a statement in Parliament? The government seems to have hardened its stance over the issue...
We are not interested in what Shri Piyush Goyal (minister of commerce and industry, consumer affairs, and food and public distribution and textiles; also Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha) has to say.
We are not interested in what the MPs of the BJP have to say. We need to hear the prime minister on this issue.
This is not business as usual. We've invoked an emergency provision (Rule 267 that calls for suspension of all other Parliamentary business).
Let me tell you, since 1952, Pandit (Jawaharlal) Nehru (the first prime minister of independent India) has spoken in Raja Sabha under this provision (Rule 267).
(Then prime minister) Rajiv Gandhi has spoken on a very controversial issue like the Bofors (scandal) under this provision.
(Then prime minister) Dr Manmohan Singh has spoken on Nirbhaya (gang rape issue) under this provision.
Even (Then prime minister) Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee has spoken under this provision.
Mr Modi should not act like a demigod.
In a Parliamentary democracy if the Opposition is demanding that he come and speak, (then) I think he should bow to the supremacy of Parliament.
But the government seems to have hardened its stance over the Opposition's demand that the prime minister speak in Parliament and a discussion on Manipur be carried out under Rule 267?
Please understand the ministers of the government, they only protect him (Modi), not the country.
Wouldn't it have been better if all the women MPs from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha together have visited the two women and expressed their solidarity with them cutting across party lines?
Just because women are raped doesn't mean all women have to go. We need very much our male counterparts to come with us.
What would have been ideal is an all-party delegation that the government should have sent which would have BJP, NDA, INDIA alliance (MPs). We made that demand more than one month before Parliament started. But that demand was also struck down by the government of India.
So we (just the MPs belonging to the INDIA alliance) went.
