"Agenda-Driven Narratives": Top Assam Rifles Officer On "Bias" Allegations In Manipur Ops

The Assam Rifles has maintained a neutral stance since ethnic violence began in Manipur in May 2023, the dual-role force's Director General Lieutenant General PC Nair has said, and termed as "stupid reports" allegations that the Assam Rifles has been "favouring one community and not the other".

Lt General Nair said to call the Assam Rifles (AR) biased towards a particular community is "nothing but rumours" spread by some people with a hidden agenda.

"... From the first day, the Assam Rifle has maintained a neutral stand [in Manipur]. All these narratives that have been coming are agenda-driven. It makes me laugh when I read some of these stupid reports saying the Assam Rifles is favouring one community, not favouring the other. These are nothing but rumours, falsehoods, preposterous," Lt General Nair told news agency ANI.

"There is no background to this [allegation] and I can substantiate it with statistics... To call us being biased towards a particular community is wrong," he said.

The AR is under the administrative control of the Home Ministry and operational control of the army. It guards the 1,600-km-long Indo-Myanmar border, of which nearly 400 km is in Manipur, where it also functions as the primary counter-insurgency force making its task a dual-role one. There are some Border Security Force (BSF) battalions in Manipur, but they are not specifically tasked with guarding the Indo-Myanmar border.

Lt General Nair's comment also comes days after former BSF Additional Director General (ADG) PK Mishra told NEWS9 channel that a massive failure of command and control coordination in Manipur has made central forces' intervention ineffective in Manipur, where the valley-dominant Meitei community and nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis - a term given by the British in colonial times - who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, have been fighting since May 2023.

The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the nearly two dozen tribes that share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar's Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.

The former BSF ADG who retired after 40 years in the service had said "one paramilitary force should be shifted out of Manipur" to stabilise the state. "I can tell you it involves shifting of - I repeat very strongly - shifting of one paramilitary force from Manipur. Definitely it will come to an end... One force has to go from there. They have been there for so many years..." Mr Mishra told NEWS9.

Referring to purported videos on social media that allegedly shows the AR in a bad light during operations in Manipur, Lt General Nair said most of them are doctored videos made by people with hidden agenda to create trouble.

"... If videos are going around, these are doctored videos. I can tell you I have about 30 to 40 videos which have been circulating. Don't even belong to the northeast. They are from Myanmar, they are from other places. Some of them are from the Rohingya region. But some people who have a hidden agenda to create trouble here are doctoring that and showing them as security forces acting against people," Lt General Nair said.

"Yes, there have been certain other instances where videos of Manipur have been shown. But among those videos also, it is only part of the incident. Let's say an incident has happened for about five to 10 minutes. Let's say there are people who have been stopped, and the Assam Rifles is trying to stop them or whatever. In these videos that are being propagated, they only show part clippings which make the story very different

" Unless you see the entire video, unless you see the complete facts, you will tend to get carried away by what is coming. And that is precisely what is happening. Part of the story, part of the photograph, and part of the videos are what are being made and shown to drive a certain agenda which is wrong..." Lt General Nair said.

In January this year, videos of a tense stand-off between the AR and a group of insurgents in Manipur's border town Moreh had emerged on social media, raising questions over how they stopped the security forces from moving around in the town just a stone's throw away from Myanmar.

The soldiers inside an armoured vehicle were heard shouting warnings at the insurgents blocking their way. The insurgents carried American-origin M series assault rifles and anti-armour recoilless guns, which they managed to set up on the road in front of the armoured vehicle. Sources said 'village defence volunteers' across Manipur carry only licenced single-barrelled guns for self protection.

Another video of an AR truck blocking the gate of a police station in Manipur, with a police commando arguing with AR soldiers over allegedly not allowing the police to drive out, had gone viral last year.

Two dozen Kuki-Zo insurgent groups that have signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement with the centre and the state government are housed in designated camps, under the watch of the security forces including the AR.

Sources said the Manipur government's repeated allegations that some signatories of the SoO agreement have been violating ground rules does not reflect well on the main force that is deployed in Manipur's hill and border areas.

The AR had to vacate the Kangla Fort in the heart of the state capital Imphal in 2004 following massive protests after the mutilated body of a 32-year-old Meitei woman, Thangjam Manorama Devi, was found. She was taken away by AR soldiers a day before. The Assam Rifles at that time had said she was an informer of the Meitei insurgent group People's Liberation Army, and she was killed in firing while she was trying to escape.

The Manipur Police, too, face allegations of bias as the Kuki tribes see them as a force comprising only people from the Meitei community, though many senior police officers belong to the Kuki tribes. Police commandos have been accused by Kuki MLAs and civil society organisations of working with Meitei armed groups to target Kuki areas.

The Kuki tribes have shared many purported visuals on social media alleging that members of Meitei armed groups wearing khaki uniforms have embedded themselves with police commando teams to attack Kuki villages. The Centre and the state government in November 2023 signed a ceasefire deal with the Meitei outfit United National Liberation Front (Pambei). The Kuki tribes have alleged UNLF(P) members have been fighting alongside the police. The Manipur Police have refuted all the allegations.

Over 220 have died in the ethnic violence, and nearly 50,000 have been internally displaced.