Locals protest against the rape of Richina Sangma in Williamnagar. Credit: Biplab Dey. All rights reserved.In early October 2014, the body of a young tribal girl was found facedown in Meghalaya’s East Garo Hills. Her body had been decapitated, charred, bruised and left naked in a densely forested area near Kisumgolgre village in the sprawling East Garo district. The girl, identified later by the police as Richina Sangma, was a 15-year-old Garo. She had been reported missing a few days earlier. Parts of her body that were severed and strewn in the jungle, when discovered, had already been partly eaten by wild animals.
India’s rugged north-east — which consists of the seven states of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and the Himalayan state of Sikkim — has seen a rise in crimes against women over the past decade. In 2014, the National Crime Records Bureau reported that six of the north-east states have witnessed an accelerated increase in crimes against women. These crimes ranged from rape and kidnapping through to dowry death and domestic cruelty.
Let us pay closer attention to the events at Williamnagar, the town that Sangma belonged to. The town is the district headquarters of the East Garo Hills in Meghalaya. According to reports, the teenager was lured by her stepfather (who allegedly claimed that he was taking the girl for a medical check up) and raped before she was killed. The girl’s mother had also reportedly complained to the police that her husband had been sexually assaulting the girl for over a year.
