Aizawl: On the morning of August 21, a blurred photo of a young man wearing only his undergarments, along with a few screenshots, went viral on Instagram. The compilation of screenshots included people’s statuses and WhatsApp messages describing a brutal crime.
According to these messages, two women and a man allegedly beat the victim and forced him to parade naked on the road before leaving him to die near an electric pole in front of Vishal Mega Mart in Bawngkawn. The victim was 23-year-old Freddy Malsawmdawngzela, a resident of Ramhlun South in Aizawl.
“You would have adored him if you knew him as a child,” his mother, C Lalmuankimi told EastMojo, explaining how he would be passed around in different arms because everyone adored his pretty face and wanted to hold him.
Three days after Freddy’s funeral, EastMojo stepped into Malsawmdawngzela’s uncle’s house in Ramhlun Vengthlang where his funeral had been held. The house was filled with children scurrying about, and a few empty wooden YMA (Young Mizo Association) benches were still in place for guests from the community to sit and offer comfort to the grieving family.
His sister, Esther Lalrinfeli, was sweeping the floor. The shock of identifying her younger brother at the morgue in Aizawl’s Civil Hospital just around a hundred hours ago was still evident on her face.
“He was my friend,” she told EastMojo, “he shared everything with me, if a girl sent him a message, he would talk about her with me, if anything bothered him or stressed him out, he would discuss it with me.”
Esther unlocked her mobile phone and swiped through her gallery to show a picture of a young boy of around four sitting with his siblings, as proud as any kid in Mizoram is when they are sitting in front of the church’s decorations on Christmas day. Freddy wore a navy blue polo shirt and sat with his hands behind his back, Esther sat smiling next to him, wearing a pink top and a black skirt.
As a young boy, Freddy was shy and spoke little but he liked to play sports, he went to Kids Care School in Ramhlun South and later enrolled in Ramhlun High School where he studied till grade ten. “Anytime, someone asked him his ambition, he would be quick to answer, ‘Pastor,” his mother told EastMojo.
She explained how he played basketball, badminton, and football and even enrolled in Karate classes. While he was average in his studies, he loved sports and his favorite time of the school year was always the sports week.
But like many teenagers, Freddy was unlucky in love, which changed his entire life. “When he was around seventeen or eighteen, Freddy fell in love for the first time. He loved her so much that he wanted to marry her. We even went to her house to ask for her hand in marriage, but it didn’t work out, and it broke him. It changed him completely,” his mother said.
“He used to have perfect attendance at Sunday School throughout the year,” said his sister, Esther. She explained how sometimes she, Freddy, and their mother would go to church together to pray about their family problems.
“But he was emotional and didn’t know how to handle his feelings,” she said. “He struggled with his love life, and we had family problems as well. He couldn’t bear it all, so he began staying out a lot.”
Even as he pursued various avenues in search of happiness, his mother, Muankimi, said he never stopped praying. He would ask her to sleep beside him, holding her hand with one hand while clutching a Bible in the other.
Muankimi was cooking dinner when she got a phone call from her daughter Esther informing her that they found a body they believed belonged to her son. “My world stopped moving,” she said. Since that night she has only slept for around an hour every night.
“They did not let me see his body, and only let me see him when they had covered him up and put him in the coffin. But even his face alone was enough to show how much he had endured. His chin had bite marks, his eyes were beaten blue, his lips were swollen, and blood was oozing out of his ears, his head and his nose,” she said.
It is the worst nightmare for a mother to lose her son, but a nightmare does not begin to describe what Freddy’s mother had to go through, hearing about her son’s death and then seeing videos and photos of his torture through her mobile phone.
“Whenever I think of how scared and afraid he must have been as he was paraded naked on the road bruised and beaten, I lose my sanity,” she said. She described Freddy as a boy who never caused trouble for others. He never initiated conflict, but if someone provoked him, he would not hesitate to stand up for himself.
The last time Muankimi and her son spoke was on Sunday night when he used a friend’s phone to call his mother and sister. “It is possible that when he used someone else’s phone to contact us, the others thought he had stolen it. From what we understand, he left the phone on the bed near the pillow, but they suspected him of theft and began beating him. They tore his clothes, broke his phone, and then sent photos of his beaten body to his friend, claiming they were having a midnight party and had thrown him out naked.”
“When they found his body in the morning, our relatives who work nearby were there, but they did not recognize him because he was beaten so badly,” said Esther. She was the first in the family to be informed of his death by one of Freddy’s friends. Esther explained how she went into shock and couldn’t believe it until they sent her a photo.
The police are investigating the case and further details are awaited, when this report was being written, one person had been arrested and two had been taken in for questioning.
Muankimi described her son as a compassionate man who couldn’t pass by those in need without offering help. Despite their own financial struggles, he would always insist on giving whatever he could to those less fortunate. He also doted on his mother and sisters.
“Just a few days back I was sick and he kept asking me what I wanted to eat, he asked me if I wanted to drink ORS, he had so much love to give,” she said.
That he had a lot of love to give was evident on the last phone call he had with his mother and sister. His mother said, like he always does, he told us, “Ka hmangaih lutuk che u(I love you very much).”
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