New Delhi:

The Supreme Court Wednesday took a strong note of an undertrial prisoner lodged in a Manipur jail not being taken to a hospital for treatment just because he belonged to the minority ‘Kuki’ community, saying it does not “trust the State”.

A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Ujjal Bhuyan made some strong observations against the State while hearing a plea filed by Lunkhongam Haokip that he was suffering from piles and tuberculosis and was not taken to hospital by jail officials despite having severe backache.

“We do not trust the State…The accused was not taken to hospital because he is from the Kuki community. So sad! We direct him to be examined now. If the medical report reveals something serious, we will take you to task,” the bench said.

The counsel for Mr Haokip claimed the jail officials did not pay heed to persistent requests for medical help.

The bench perused an order of the Manipur High Court and found that the undertrial prisoner was not taken to hospital since he was from Kuki community and “shifting him to a hospital will be hazardous taking into account the law and order situation”.

Manipur has been in the grip of an ethnic conflict between the minority Kuki and majority Meitei communities.

The bench directed the jail superintendent and the state authorities “to make necessary arrangements for his transportation to the Gauhati Medical College and get him examined therein. The medical exam shall be as regards piles, TB, tonsillitis, abdominal pain as well as problems in lower lumbar spine”.

It sought a detailed medical report on or before July 15 and asked the state to bear all the expenses, including the treatment cost.

Manipur descended into chaos and violence in May last year over a high court order directing the state government to consider including the non-tribal Meitei community in the list of Scheduled Tribes.

More than 170 people have been killed and several hundred others injured since ethnic violence first broke out in the state on May 3 last year when a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was organised in hill districts to protest against the majority Meitei community’s demand for ST status.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The total income loss for the State in the farm sector during the violence was estimated at ₹226.5 crore. File image for representation.
| Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR

GUWAHATI: Manipur’s Agriculture Department has come up with a crop compensation package of ₹38.06 crore as relief for the farmers affected by the ethnic conflict that broke out on May 3. 

The ethnic violence between the tribal Kuki and the non-tribal Meitei communities has claimed more than 200 lives and displaced about 60,000 people. The turmoil also prevented farmers in the violence-prone areas from tending to their fields, resulting in crop loss. 

Officials said the package was estimated on the basis of an independent survey conducted by Loumee Shinmee Apunba Lup, a farmers’ body which estimated that paddy crop on a total of 9,719 hectares of land on the periphery of Imphal Valley could fail as farmers are afraid to go to the fields because of sporadic firing by armed miscreants from higher grounds. 

The total income loss for the State in the farm sector during the violence was estimated at ₹226.5 crore, with rice accounting for 93.36% of the total agriculture and allied activities followed by livestock farming. 

Worst affected

“Of the five crisis-hit valley districts [Bishnupur, Imphal East, Imphal West, Kakching, and Thoubal], Bishnupur is the worst affected in terms of agricultural land area comprising 5,288 hectares, constituting 54.4% of the total land area of 9,718 hectares followed by Imphal East with 1,770 hectares and Imphal West,” the report said. 

Bishnupur, which shares its boundary with Churachandpur district, has been one of the most vulnerable districts. Farmers of Phubala, Sunusiphai, Naranseina, Khoirentak, Kumbi, Sagang, Torbung, Wangoo, and Khoijuman Khunou villages have been the worst hit, some of them having sustained bullet injuries. 

“The current situation is such that our farmers are back to square one. Despite the security arrangements, they fear to venture out to the fields to take care of the paddy plants,” president of the farmers’ body Mutum Churamani said. 

He said the farmers were scared to go to their fields located mostly near the foothills, from where intermittent firing had been taking place over the past five months. 

“With security arrangements, we somehow managed to send our farmers in July to initiate tilling and prepare for sowing. A State-level monitoring committee was later formed for this purpose,” Mr. Churamani said. 

Apart from the commissioner and director of the Agriculture Department, the committee comprised members of five farmers’ organisations. Following the advice of the committee, the Manipur government started providing security cover for the farmers during the kharif season for working in the fields. 

About 2,000 security personnel had been diverted for this purpose by downgrading VIP security cover with district commissioners of affected districts appealing to the peasants not to venture out for farming activities without security arrangements considering the volatile situation. 

State Agriculture Commissioner R.K. Dinesh Singh said that in order to mitigate the current crisis, the department approached the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for funding a crop compensation package as relief for the farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by the ethnic violence. 

“The MHA accepted the proposal of the department for a crop compensation package of ₹38.06 crore. We want to speed up the process of releasing the relief package to the affected farmers by November,” he said.