Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 7: Six people were killed on Saturday morning in Jiribam district as Manipur was engulfed in fresh violence a day after a 70-year old Meitei priest was killed in a rocket-propelled bomb attack allegedly by Kuki insurgents in Moirang town on Friday.
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 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.” Officials in the State’s Jiribam district said suspected Kuki extremists shot an elderly Meitei man dead in his sleep at Nungchappi village near the state’s border with Assam at about 5:30 a.m. Five members of armed groups – four from the Kuki-Zo community and one from the Meitei community – were killed in a retaliatory gunfight.
Members of both groups claimed the people who died in the gunfight were “village volunteers.” The violence spread to the nearby Rashidpur area where intermittent firing continued until 9:50 a.m. The situation remained tense as the hostilities – lesser in intensity as the day progressed – did not end, the officials said.
After the killing, a heavy exchange of fire broke out between armed men of the warring communities in the hills around 7 km from the district headquarters, leading to the deaths of four armed persons, including three hills-based militants, the officer said.
Earlier this week, fresh arson broke out in the district after suspected “village volunteers” burnt down an abandoned three-room house of a retired police officer at Jakuradhor in Borobekra. Tribal body Indigenous Tribes Advocacy Committee (Pherzawl and Jiribam) denied any involvement in the incident.
The district witnessed fresh violence despite representatives of the Meitei and Hmar communities reaching an agreement to restore normalcy and “prevent incidents of arson and firing” in a meeting held at a CRPF facility in adjoining Assam’s Cachar on August 1.
In the meeting moderated by the Jiribam district administration, Assam Rifles and CRPF personnel, and representatives of Hmar, Meitei, Thadou, Paite and Mizo communities of Jiribam district were also present. The agreement was, however, denounced by several Hmar tribal bodies based outside Jiribam district saying they did not have any knowledge about it.
More than 200 people have been killed and thousands rendered homeless in ethnic violence between Imphal Valley-based Meiteis and adjoining hills-based Kuki-Zo groups since May last year. Ethnically-diverse Jiribam, which was largely untouched by ethnic violence in Imphal Valley and adjoining hills, erupted in violence after a 59-year-old man belonging to one community was killed allegedly by militants of another community in June this year. Thousands had to leave their homes and relocate to relief camps due to incidents of arson by both sides. A CRPF jawan was also killed in an ambush by militants during patrolling by security forces in mid-July.
Occupying a part of Manipur’s western boundary, Jiribam adjoins the Cachar district of Assam and has a mixed population of Meitei, Kuki-Zo, Naga, Bengali Muslims and other communities.
The district was largely unaffected by the ethnic violence between the non-tribal Meiteis and the tribal Kuki-Zos that broke out on May 3, 2023, until the first week of June when 12,000 people were displaced, a majority of them taking shelter in Assam.
The Jiribam gunfight was the fourth incident of violence since September 1, killing at least three people and injuring 17 others. Police said drones were used in the first two attacks in the Imphal West district to drop explosives on Meitei villages. People in peripheral areas of Bishnupur and Imphal East districts of Manipur turned off their lights on Friday night following sightings of multiple drones, officials said.
Drones were allegedly employed by militants to drop bombs on people at two nearby places in Imphal West district earlier this week. On Friday night, multiple drones were sighted at Narainsena, Nambol Kamong in Bishnupur district and Pukhao, Dolaithabi, Shantipur in Imphal East district creating panic in the areas, the officials said.
Panicked villagers turned off lights at home. Security forces are on high alert in peripheral areas to monitor the movement of large groups of people, an official said. Several illumination rounds were fired in the sky in Bishnupur district creating panic and confusion among the public. It was not clear if security forces or others had fired those.
The use of drones as a weapon was first noticed in Manipur on September 1 in Koutruk village in Imphal West district. In the attack in which guns were also used, two persons were killed and nine others were injured. The remote-controlled small flying device was employed again in Senjam Chirang, around three km away, the next day, injuring three persons.
Kuki-Zo groups, specifically the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) claimed the bombs boomeranged on the Manipur police and armed Meitei radical groups.
The Meitei Heritage Society, a Delhi-based group trashed this claim. “Understandably, this is a desperate attempt by the ITLF to lie through its teeth as there is no other way to justify the terror act of Kuki militants killing Meitei civilians through drone bombings and missile attacks. We expect more such lies from them,” it said in a statement.
The Coordinating Committee of Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), an apex body of civil society groups, on Saturday set a five-day deadline for the Central security forces to “either take definitive action against Kuki militant groups or withdraw” from the State. “The people of Manipur have lost trust in the central forces’ approach as they have failed to adequately address the situation,” it said in a statement, accusing the paramilitary Assam Rifles in particular of helping Kuki extremists in attacking the indigenous people.
The COCOMI also said the “public emergency” it declared on September 6 will continue indefinitely and “all public and private institutions, markets, business establishments, and banks must remain closed” during this period. It said the roads will remain open only for emergency movement, essential services, and religious activities and rituals but members of women’s groups and local clubs have been asked to stop the movement of central armed forces “within civilian areas and border zones” if they fail to deal with the Kuki extremists.
Some 230 people have lost their lives and more than 60,000 people have been displaced in the 16-month-long ethnic violence in Manipur.