‘Manipur is on fire and PM Modi is cracking jokes’

Women in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, shout anti-govt slogans during a protest against the alleged sexual assault of women in Manipur. Meira Paibis, a collective of Meitei women, also protested across the Imphal Valley against the alleged gang-rape of a 37-year-old woman on May 3. Pic/PTI

Stepping up attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Manipur violence, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said it does not behove the Prime Minister to laugh and crack jokes in Parliament when the state has been "on fire" for the past three months.

The PM "wants Manipur to burn and allows it to burn", Gandhi alleged while addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here. Gandhi's attack came a day after Modi slammed the Opposition in his over two-hour reply to the motion of no-confidence against his government in Lok Sabha. In his over 130-minute reply, Modi spoke on the Manipur issue for barely five minutes.

‘Joked for 2 hours'

"I watched the prime minister yesterday, speaking for two hours, laughing, joking and shouting slogans in Parliament. The PM would say one line and the BJP (leaders) would shout another slogan. The PM seems to have forgotten that Manipur has been on fire for three months," he said.

Rahul Gandhi, MP, Congress

"When we went to Manipur and went to the Meitei area we were told that they want us to come, they love us, but we should not have any Kuki in our security detail or they will be shot. We were told the same thing when we were going to the Kuki area about Meitei," Gandhi said.

He said the central security personnel told him in Manipur that they had never seen anything like what was happening in Manipur.

"That is why I said the idea of India has been murdered by the BJP in Manipur. I was not speaking metaphorically, I was speaking literally," he added.

"That is why in my speech (in Lok Sabha) I said Bharat Mata has been murdered in Manipur. For the first time, the words Bharat Mata have been expunged from Parliament. It is an insult to those words. What is it that I have said is wrong? I have said Bharat Mata, which is the idea of India, where everybody lives peacefully, harmoniously and with affection, has been killed in Manipur, it is a fact," Gandhi said.

‘A PM's not a petty politician'

Gandhi asserted that when a person becomes the prime minister, he ceases to be a politician and should become the representative of the voice of the people. "The prime minister should not speak as a petty politician, as the leader of a political party, but he should speak with the weight of the Indian people behind him... He is our representative."

‘57 bodies still in hospitals, decaying'

In the Manipur government hospitals, 57 bodies remain to be claimed even months after ethnic violence broke out between Meiteis of the Imphal valley and Kukis from the hills, according to a report in TheNewsMinute (TNM). Thirty of these bodies have not been identified yet and said to be Kukis, "Family members of Kuki victims cannot cross the blockade to come to Imphal and we have not been able to arrange a way to transport the bodies," Dr Bapin Kumar Moiramtheng, of Jawaharlal Nehru Instit-ute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Imphal East district, told TNM.

With cold storage facility full beyond capacity, the hospital is forced to use the traditional method involving pumpkin juice and formaldehyde. "...but now the bodies are badly decomposed and the faces are disfigured," said Dr Tinglonglei Thangluai, medical superintendent of the hospital.

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