The Iron Lady Of India

Irom Chanu Sharmila also known as the "Iron Lady of Manipur" is a civil rights activist, political activist, and poet from the state of Manipur. On 2 November 2000, she began a hunger strike which is still ongoing. Having refused food and water for more than 500 weeks, she has been called "the world's longest hunger striker". On International Women’s Day, 2014 she was voted the top woman icon of India by MSN Poll.
                                  On 2 November 2000, in Malom, a town in the Imphal Valley of Manipur, ten civilians were shot and killed while waiting at a bus stop. The incident, known as the "Malom Massacre", is thought to be allegedly committed by the Assam Rifles.
   Sharmila, who was 28 at the time, began to fast in protest of the killing, taking neither food nor water. As her brother Irom Singhajit Singh recalled, "It was a Thursday. Sharmila used to fast on Thursdays since she was a child. That day she was fasting too. She has just continued with her fast."

Irom Sharmila continued to face the charge of attempted suicide. She was held in enforced isolation which the National Human Rights Commission of India recommended for the Manipur government to immediately stop. A summon was issued for Sharmila Chanu to appear for trial on 19 December 2013.
Since the maximum sentence for attempted suicide is one year and she had been held for more than six years she was told the case will be settled if she pled guilty. However, she maintained that she had not attempted suicide, but was protesting in the "most non-violent way, like Mahatma Gandhi." On 19 August 2014, a court in Imphal ordered that Sharmila should be released from custody "if not required in any other case", stating that the prosecution had "failed miserably" to demonstrate that Sharmila had intended to commit suicide through fasting. On August 22 2014 she was again arrested, once more charged with attempted suicide, and remanded to judicial custody for 15 days by a magistrate.

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