Hours later, she appeared at a news conference, the nose tube already removed, and tasted the honey.
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I want equality. I am called the Iron Lady of Manipur and I want to live up to it, said Sharmila.
“I will use everything that I have for the positive change of the society”, Sharmila said. It also gives the police wide-ranging search and seizure powers. “I do not want security”.
Meanwhile, doctors said she will need medical help to begin eating again, having stayed without food for 16 years. “I want to try different agitation now – one that will see me contest against the Chief Minister of the State”, Sharmila said. “I want to change that”, she said.
Her decision was welcomed by the BJP and the Congress.
The ambulance then took her near the elephant statue in the heart of Imphal city. From there she was whisked away to an undisclosed place.
In court that year, he referenced how Mahatma Gandhi used the same mode of protest during the nation’s independence struggle. However, it was not to support her as these members have been doing all these years.
“We don’t know when the release orders will come”, Rebada said. It is only after her assurance that she was breaking her fast that the local court granted her bail.
Earlier in the day, Sharmila told a court that she wants to end her fast.
Image: Irom Sharmila was escorted to the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Imphal West. Later, she signed a bond for Rs 10,000.
Sharmila, 43, had not eaten for years as a protest against an immunity law covering Indian military in the country’s conflict zones such as her home state, the northeastern state of Manipur, where a separatist rebellion has raged for almost four decades. She has not responded yet.
Bombarded with questions about her plans, Irom had, haltingly but defiantly said: “This is my life”. “I haven’t spoken to her in the last few days because of my bad health”.
On 2 November, 2000, 10 Indians were shot dead, allegedly by the Assam Rifles, in Manipur’s Malom town.
This allowed officials to force-feed her.
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It is not clear whether she will return to the family home – she has said she would like to marry her fiance, a British national of Indian origin who she met after starting her fast. In fact, they were not aware of Sharmila’s decision till they read her statement in a vernacular newspaper.
