Soldiers evacuate members of the Meitei community from Jiribam in Manipur
Imphal/Guwahati/New Delhi:
Security forces have evacuated some families from the Meitei community living on the outskirts of Jiribam town in Manipur, a day after ethnic tensions flared over the killing of a 59-year-old man. The mutilated body of Soibam Saratkumar Singh, a native of the Meitei community, was found yesterday in neighboring Assam district, which has an ethnically diverse makeup and had so far been unaffected by the ethnic strife that has been raging in Manipur since May last year.
Locals NDTV spoke to by phone blamed authorities and police for failing to defuse tension that had been building since mid-May when the decomposed body of a 17-year-old teenager from the Kuki tribes was found in a river in Jiribam. Police sources, however, said deployments were sparse in the area which was relatively quiet due to election duties.
Leishabithol, from where the Meitei families were evacuated, is close to the hills where the Kuki tribes are dominant, while inland Jiribam has a large Meitei presence. Although no incidents were reported from the area today, residents expressed concern for their safety, leading to their evacuation, local government officials in Jiribam told NDTV.
The families can return once the situation cools and sufficient security forces arrive, the officials said, adding that there are not enough troops in the area as many had left for election duties.
A group of women from the Meitei community have filed a first information report (FIR) at Jiribam police station, alleging that some “Kuki militants” have threatened them, a police officer in Jiribam told NDTV over phone. The women also gave names of some men they claimed were militants, the officer said, requesting anonymity.
Two of the suspects in the FIR, seen by NDTV, are named as “Kuki militants, and the Kuki Students Organization (KSO) and its armed militant wing.” The KSO has not yet issued a statement on the allegations.
Linked to the May incident
The new tension can be traced back to May, when the decomposed body of a 17-year-old Kuki teenager was found in a river in Jiribam, the police officer said. The case was handled by the police of neighboring Tamenglong district as the body was found in the inter-district border and Tamenglong had jurisdiction over the area, the police officer said, adding that Tamenglong police had taken the body and the post had led. -mortem.
“The Kukis suspected that Meitei was involved in the incident. The Tamenglong police must have investigated the case, as they did during the autopsy. No one has been arrested in that case yet. The body was decomposed, with many body parts eaten by fish. ” ”, said the police officer. “This river has seen many decomposed bodies floating downstream in the past. Some murder cases were the result of personal rivalries, some drug overdoses. Ethnic tensions since last year have exacerbated the issue.”
To defuse tension after the decomposed body was found in the river in May, a peace meeting was held between elders of both communities, a man who attended the meeting told NDTV from Jiribam. However, some youths left the meeting angrily, he claimed.
The tension reached a peak on Thursday when the mutilated body of Soibam Saratkumar Singh was found. A group of people from the Meitei community took to the streets to protest at 5pm and set fire to a vacant building belonging to a Kuki family, another police officer who returned to the capital Imphal from Jiribam today told NDTV. Later that evening, some armed Kuki men set fire to an empty shed in a Meitei family farm and recorded a video of it.
This morning, security forces evacuated about 250 members of the Meitei community from the outskirts of Jiribam.
Call for calm
The Jiribam District Commissioner has appealed for calm and asked people not to fall for false information spread by elements who want to create trouble. Jiribam is located 220 km from the capital Imphal and lies on the border with Assam. National Highway-37 passes through this district. There are many Kuki villages in the hills surrounding the highway.
The ethnic clashes between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zo tribes began in May 2023 over cataclysmic disagreements over land sharing, resources, affirmative action policies and political representation, mainly involving the 'general' category of Meiteis seeking to be included in the Scheduled Tribes category.
More than 220 people have died and more than 50,000 have been internally displaced.
