Women protest the rise in incidents of rape at the rally in Dimapur on Wednesday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Kohima, Sept. 3: Dimapur police today fired teargas shells after 10,000 women protesters went on a rampage in front of the deputy commissioner’s office where they had gone to demand public punishment to four rapists.

The trigger for the outburst was obscene comments aimed at the women, who were returning after submitting a memorandum to deputy commissioner Moawangwati Ao on the growing cases of rape in the state. They demanded exemplary punishment to the four youths who had gangraped a pregnant woman on August 27.

The women, enraged by the provocative comm- ents, started throwing stones at the deputy commissioner’s office, damaging a few windowpanes.

The police said they burst teargas shells to disperse the mob as it tried to ransack the office. No one was injured, the police added. A driver, Toshi Yimchunger, was arrested later in the evening for passing the lewd remarks.

On August 27 evening, four college students abducted a woman who was seven months pregnant from Showuba village near Dimapur after assaulting her husband. The woman was then raped on a moving Maruti Swift. After committing the crime, the youths dumped her at the spot from where they had abducted her. The four also threatened her with dire consequences if she filed a complaint saying they were members of a Naga militant group.

According to the victim, she and her husband were coming home after visiting a relative in a hospital around 8pm when the four youths accosted them. The next day, the four rapists were arrested after she filed an FIR at the local police station.

The four —Tohovi Ayemi and Akito Zhimomi of Vihokhu village and Mughaka Yepthomi and William Awomi of Kehokhu village — are all in their early twenties.

But surprisingly, the Showuba Village Council, the village court which tried them, let the four off after fining them Rs 15 each. This infuriated the women and has also irked the Nagaland Women’s Commission. Several Naga organisations criticised the village council for bailing out the rapists.

Over 10,000 women from all the tribal hohos, colleges and schools, representatives of Naga Mothers Association, Naga Students Federation, Naga Hoho, Gaonburahs and Dobashish Joint Forum, Dimapur Naga Students Union, Western Sumi Hoho, Western Sumi Students Union, Western Sumi Women Hoho and several other Naga and non-Naga organisations participated in the rally. They demanded stringent punishment to the rapists.

In the memorandum to the deputy commissioner, the women demanded that the rapists be awarded no less than 10 years’ imprisonment and that no group or individual be allowed to bail them out. It said if anyone tried to do so, the women would chart their own course of action.

They also demanded that the persons responsible for the rape and murder of a schoolgirl on August 17 at Dimapur be brought to book immediately. Though the police have detained several persons in the case, the real culprits have eluded arrest.