Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Nov 12: While bodies of two men, both senior citizens, were found in the debris of gutted shops, six people including three women and three children, from the nearby relief camp are still reported missing after the alleged encounter between the security forces and Kuki “militants” whom the civil society groups of the Kuki tribes have claimed to be 11 “innocent village volunteers” gunned down by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Jiribam in Manipur. The missing children include a two-year-old baby.
They alleged the CRPF opened fire without provocation. Refuting the Kuki tribes claim of the deceased being only village volunteers, the Manipur Police in a press conference on Tuesday said the 10 killed in the encounter had enough firepower to create chaos in the affected area in Jiribam, near the border with Assam. The security forces also released visuals of the weapons they claimed were found in the hands of the militants. They included an RPG launcher, and AK and INSAS assault rifles.
“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 on Tuesday.
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 bodies of two men – Laishram Balen and Maibam Kesho from the Meitei community were found inside a structure that was set on fire by the militants, the police officer added.
Narrating the sequence of events yesterday, the police officer said the suspected militants began the attack at 2.30 pm on Borobekra police station, and moved towards a CRPF camp a few hundred metres away.” The militants were armed with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher, INSAS and AK assault rifles. The CRPF fired back after coming under attack. The gunfight lasted 45 minutes. We found 10 bodies after that,” the police officer said.
There is a small settlement between the police station and the CRPF camp, and the suspected Kuki militants set several houses on fire, a police officer in Jiribam’s Borobekra said.
Curfew was clamped in several parts of Jiribam district as tense situation prevailed in the area after Monday’s encounter. A shutdown has been observed since 5 am on Tuesday in Kuki-Zo majority areas in the hills to protest against the killing of suspected insurgents. The police said the “insurgents” fired indiscriminately at a police station and an adjacent CRPF camp in the Jiribam district. Two CRPF personnel were injured in the gunfight.
The Kuki-Zo Council called for a total shutdown in the hill areas of the State from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday to express their “collective grief and solidarity who were brutally shot dead.” Eleven suspected militants were killed in the fierce gunfight with security forces on Monday after insurgents in camouflage uniforms, armed with sophisticated weapons, fired indiscriminately at a police station and an adjacent CRPF camp in Jiribam district.
Following the incident, fresh violence was reported from multiple places in Imphal Valley where armed groups from the two warring sides engaged in exchanges of fire, the State police said. Locals and security forces recovered several improvised mortar shells in two villages of Imphal West district on Tuesday morning, officials said and added that operations were continuing to flush out militants, and reinforcement teams consisting of Assam Rifles, CRPF have been deployed in disturbed areas.