New Delhi:

Ten Kuki-Zo MLAs from Manipur have asked the Centre and the state government to start a political dialogue for bringing lasting peace in the troubled region, two days after the Manipur cabinet also resolved to do the same.

The 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs, who have been leading the call for a separate administration to be carved out of Manipur, in an eight-point statement on Wednesday also condemned the attack on the houses of “our colleague Meitei MLAs and ministers by frenzied Meitei mobs”.

The Manipur cabinet resolution, too, had called the attacks on MLAs and ministers “barbaric actions”, to be investigated by a high-powered committee.

The statement signed by the 10 Kuki-Zo leaders, including Saikot MLA Paolienlal Haokip, who is a fierce critic of Chief Minister N Biren Singh, acknowledged the need for the high-powered committee.

However, this is where the similarity in the call for how to bring peace ends. The Manipur cabinet’s resolution and the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs’ statement – both in eight bullet points – differ widely on other critical matters.

“The suggested high-powered committee should investigate into the role/involvement of vested interest political parties and individuals/Meitei CSO leaders with secessionist mindset taking undue advantage of the situation,” the Kuki-Zo MLAs said in the statement.

“The entire episode appears to be a mere political vendetta with sinister design for further escalation of the heightening violence and tensions in the troubled-torn state. The misdemeanour also seems emanating from certain quarters to save the shaky chair of the Chief Minister,” the 10 MLAs said in the statement.

The Kuki-Zo MLAs have not attended a single assembly session since May 2023, when ethnic clashes broke out between the valley-dominant Meitei community and the Kuki tribes, who are dominant in some hill districts in southern Manipur and a few other areas in the north, due to ostensibly insurmountable disagreements over sharing land, resources, affirmative action policy, political representation and other issues. They have cited reasons from personal safety to lack of conditions for a political dialogue for not attending the sessions held in the state capital Imphal, a valley area.

The Kuki-Zo MLAs attacked the Manipur government over the cabinet resolution that called for operations against whom the state government called “Kuki militants”.

“To start a mass operation against only one community is biased, mass operations must be conducted all over the state to recover all illegal arms from all militia groups. The resolution seeking the handing over of cases relating to the death of six civilians to NIA also smacks of a communalised State. We recommend that all civilian killings from the 3rd of May, 2023, both in the valley and hills be handed over to the NIA,” the MLAs said, referring to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) being handed over three cases from recent spike in violence to investigate.

Six members of a Meitei family including an infant and two children were taken hostage by whom the Manipur government now calls “Kuki militants” from Jiribam district last week. Their partially decomposed bodies were found in a river. The hostage-taking happened on the same day when the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) shot dead 10 men from the Kuki tribes in an “encounter”.

While the police have called them militants and showed evidence of what they say were weapons recovered from the encounter site and photos of police vehicles with numerous bullet holes, Kuki civil society groups have called the 10 men “martyrs”.

On November 7, suspected Meitei militants attacked a village of the Hmar tribe in Jirbam, 220 km from the state capital Imphal, and killed a mother of three. Her husband in a police case alleged she was raped before she was shot dead.

Kuki groups have said the Jiribam hostage-taking was a retaliation to the November 7 attack on the Hmar village. However, the Manipur government in a statement said “Kuki miscreants” set fire to several houses in Jiribam and attacked the police station in Borobekra on October 19, which sparked the latest cycle of violence, and not November 7 as claimed by Kuki groups.

“The resolution for declaration by the GoI (government of India) of ‘Kuki militants’ responsible for the killing of six innocents must be preceded by the declaration of the Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun as Unlawful Organisations under relevant laws,” the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs said.

“Village volunteers are not an organisation, but youth defending their villages from the murderous attacks by Arambai Tenggol, the so-called G5 (a conglomerate of five underground outfits of the Meitei majority) aided by the state police and, in the case of Jiribam, by the CRPF,” they said.

‘Kuki Militants As Village Volunteers’

Meitei civil society groups deny the Kuki tribes’ allegation about the Arambai Tenggol (AT). The Meiteis say AT was only a cultural youth organisation with hardly any public following, but was forced to take up arms to defend Meitei villages from relentless attacks by Kuki militants under the guise of “village volunteers”, especially in the foothills.

In the early days of the ethnic clashes after May 3, AT chief Korounganba Khuman was seen in visuals walking with a bamboo stick, while in the distance smoke was seen rising from a village behind a treeline. More visuals purportedly of May 3, 2023 showed at least three men in camouflage battledress and body armour, carrying AK series assault rifles, walking towards a field with slogan-shouting protesters from the Kuki tribes. In these visuals too, smoke can be seen rising from huts in the distance.

There are hundreds of verified and unverified visuals from Manipur showing men in bunkers from both communities, who call themselves “village volunteers”, but are armed with AK and American M series assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers.

The only time any authority in Manipur admitted to the involvement of insurgent groups of both the Meitei community and the Kuki tribes was on September 9, after five bodies were found following a fierce gunfight. Three of the bodies were confirmed as Kuki insurgents from Churachandpur district; the fourth was identified as a Kuki volunteer from Jiribam; the fifth was identified as a member of the Meitei insurgent group UNLF(P), the police had said in a statement.

The three Kuki insurgents were members of the Kuki Liberation Army (KLA), a signatory of the highly controversial suspension of operations (SoO) agreement. Former Union home minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram has sparked a fresh row over this matter, with the Manipur Chief Minister pinning the root cause of the present crisis to alleged missteps by the Congress and Mr Chidambaram, who was Union minister at the time of formally signing the previously clandestine SoO agreement in 2008.

The UNLF is the oldest Meitei insurgent group, which later broke up into two factions; the Pambei faction signed the tripartite peace agreement with the Centre and the state government in November 2023.

Sources have told NDTV there would be numerous instances of militants from both sides accompanying “village volunteers” and training them in Manipur, while the police have admitted to only one incident.

New Delhi/Imphal:

The autopsy report of a woman who was killed in a night attack by suspected insurgents in Manipur’s restive Jiribam district mentions eight wounds that include broken bones and “burnt and separated” skull. Her body was burnt 99 per cent.

The 31-year-old woman’s husband in a police case alleged she was raped before their house was set on fire by suspected “Meitei militants” in the district bordering Assam. She was a school teacher and mother of three children.

The autopsy report said samples to check for sex assault could not be taken as “the body parts were completely charred and not recognisable.” The family has buried the body after performing the last rites.

“… The right upper limb and parts of both lower limbs and the facial structure [were] found missing,” the report said.

“A penetrating wound of size 1 cm x 0.75 cm [is] seen over the back of the right thigh… coming out through an opening measuring 2 cm x 1 cm in the right upper thigh…” the post mortem report said.

It said a 5-cm-long metallic nail was found embedded on the left thigh.

“Burnt and separated fragments of bone did not show any signs of vital reaction indicating the post mortem nature of separation,” the autopsy report said.

The autopsy was done at Silchar Medical College and Hospital in neighbouring Assam, two days after the woman was killed.

“Death was due to shock as a result of third-degree mixed flame antemortem burns as described which covered 99 per cent of total body surface area. Time since death was 24 to 36 hours,” the autopsy report concluded.

The woman’s husband in the first information report (FIR) filed with the police in Jiribam, 120 km from the state capital Imphal, had alleged she was shot in the leg when the attack in their village, Zairawn, began on Thursday night. Their house collapsed after the fire completely destroyed the structure, he said.

The attackers also set fire to several other houses in the village, where people from the Hmar tribe live, civil society groups have said. Visuals of the night attack have surfaced on social media.

Thursday’s attack sparked the latest round of violence in the multi-ethnic district, where a key national highway connecting Manipur with Assam passes through.

On Monday, 10 suspected Kuki insurgents were shot dead in an encounter by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Jiribam. Civil society groups of the Kuki tribes have alleged the 10 men were “village volunteers”, and have demanded a thorough investigation into the incident.

The police have denied the allegations. The police released photos stating they recovered a military grade rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher, and INSAS and AK assault rifles, which “village volunteers” cannot use.

There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley. The clashes between the Meitei community and the nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.

The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.

Imphal:

Three children and three women are missing from Manipur’s Jiribam since yesterday after an encounter broke out between suspected Kuki insurgents and the security forces. The Manipur Police in a press conference today said the 10 killed in the encounter had enough firepower to create chaos in the affected area in Jiribam, near the border with Assam.

“Security forces have launched an operation to search for the missing people. They are three women and three children. The Assam Rifles, Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force will retaliate if fired upon,” a senior Manipur Police officer told reporters in the state capital Imphal today.

The police officer said a total of 13 internally displaced people were reported missing yesterday from Jiribam. Two have been found dead, five have been traced, and six are missing, the officer said.

The two bodies were of two senior citizens from the Meitei community. Both were found inside a structure that was set on fire by the militants, the police officer added.

Imphal/New Delhi:

Six people were killed in fresh violence this morning in Manipur’s Jiribam district, the police said. Suspected Kuki insurgents attacked Nungchappi village in the district 229 km from the state capital Imphal, killing a 63-year-old man identified as Yurembam Kulendra Singha. The attack came a day after an elderly man from the valley-dominant Meitei community, who was offering prayers, was killed in a rocket-propelled bomb attack by Kuki insurgents in Manipur’s Moirang town, according to the police.

The five others were killed in a gunfight between armed groups of the Meitei community and the hill-dominant Kuki tribes, sources said. These groups call themselves “village defence volunteers”.

The Jiribam Superintendent of Police (SP) and a police team rushed to the area, but were fired at, the police said in the statement, adding the team “retaliated strongly and controlled the firing.”

In Imphal, the Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) K Kabib today told reporters, “… Yesterday, some Kuki militants attacked and fired at some fringe areas including Bishnupur and Churachandpur border. In response to that, combined teams of the security forces conducted combing operations. They have destroyed two bunkers which was previously occupied by militants. After that, there was a long-range rocket fire from the hills by Kuki militants at Moirang, in which one senior citizen was killed and six others were injured.”

“Today morning, the Kuki militants attacked a village in Jiribam, killing a senior citizen. The militants kept firing and ran away. Some village volunteers retaliated, and when the Jiribam police reached the area, they were fired at, after which the police also fired back,” Mr Kabib said.

Jiribam is where Meitei and Hmar leaders met for peace talks last month, along with security forces commanders. They had given a joint statement agreeing to work for peace. Churachandpur-based Kuki groups, however, had objected to the peace talks, alleging the peace talk parties did not represent their interests and met only at Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s bidding.

The Hmar Inpui, however, declared it would not recognise the peace initiative and warned the individuals who participated in the meeting to “stop their blind and selfish efforts”. The Hmar Inpui had said these leaders appeared to be bowing to the “whims and fancies of a divisive and communal government under the leadership of Biren Singh…”

Anti-Drone System, Chopper Patrol

An anti-drone system has been deployed, the police said, nearly a week after suspected Kuki insurgents attacked villages in Imphal West district with weaponised drones – the first time suspected insurgents used drone attacks on Indian soil.

The police said that in a multi-pronged approach, army helicopters are keeping an eye on the ground, while combing operations in “suspected areas” in both the hills and the valley are going on. A team is also monitoring social media posts to catch instigators of violence, the police said.

The security forces have destroyed several bunkers in the foothills, the police said.

On Friday evening, crowds tried to loot weapons from the 2nd and 7th Manipur Rifles camps in the state capital Imphal, but they were prevented from doing so by the security forces, who fired blank rounds and tear gas, the police said. Two policemen were injured in firing by some people from the crowd, the police said. The two injured personnel have been identified as inspector Kh Henery, and constable Issac Gangmei. Both are in hospital.

Protesters in Imphal valley told reporters they were disappointed with the state and the central government over the drone and rocket attacks, and civilians were left with no choice but to defend themselves.

“Who in their right mind would want to loot weapons? People are being killed in their homes, despite the presence of over 50,000 central force personnel. A Meitei woman was shot by a sniper. An elderly man was killed in a rocket attack,” Imphal resident M Nirmala Devi, who came out to protest on Friday evening, told NDTV.