A tense 48 hours in Manipur between Saturday and Monday has pulled in five of the northeastern state’s communities into the spiralling violence that has killed 360 people over three years.
Kuki groups blamed Nagas. Gunfights also broke out between armed Naga and Kuki groups in other parts of Kamjong that night. The police headquarters in Imphal rushed a new Border Security Force (BSF) team to Kamjong. What began as a confrontation between two people escalated into stone pelting, a person shot dead and houses set on fire. The blast left three CRPF officers injured. They were rushed to Raj Medicity hospital, where the body of the Meitei man killed in Thoubal violence was also being brought around the same time. “In the incident, three individuals succumbed to bullet injuries. Meitei civil society groups and Meitei political leaders blamed Kuki groups. In this case, security forces arrested two militants and recovered a cache of arms and ammunition.
In these 48 hours, clashes broke out for the first time between Meitei Hindus and Meitei Pangals or Muslims, leading to a death and the burning of houses; three Meitei men were gunned down by militants, leading to the resurfacing of an ethnic hostility that first stoked the clashes in 2023; and tensions continued to simmer between the Kuki and Naga communities with one death and several injured, at least 50 houses burnt. By night, at least 50 houses belonging to both communities were burnt. But around 100 km away from Kamjong, trouble was brewing in Thoubal, close to the state capital Imphal. At 11.20pm on Saturday, stone-pelting broke out between Meiteis and Pangals attending a music festival in Khangabok Pali town. Police clamped a curfew, against the backdrop of Meiteis and Pangals clashing multiple times, dating back to 1993 when over 100 people were killed. Barely 20 minutes after stone-pelting broke out, the Manipur Police control room received another alert. At 11.41pm on Saturday, a Central Reserve Police Force team came under an IED attack in Singjamei, around 20km from the site of the Thoubal clash. At 9.40 am on Monday, an ambush was reported 47 km away from the Thoubal stone pelting site. Unidentified armed militants opened fire on a group of 16 Meitei villagers, most of them woodcutters, who were transporting chopped firewood at Sunulok Hill under Sagolmang police station.
Three other individuals have also sustained injuries,” Lhatoo said. The disturbing sequence began at 2pm on Saturday when a Kuki man was shot dead and three others injured in Chassad village in Manipur’s Kamjong district.
