A video grab of a suspected Meitei insurgent in Manipur's Jiribam
Two women were killed in fresh rounds of violence in Manipur in the last two days. In the first incident, a woman from the Hmar tribe was allegedly shot, raped and set on fire in Jiribam district by suspected Meitei insurgents on Thursday night, according to a police case filed by her husband.
In the second incident, a woman from the Meitei community was shot dead by suspected Kuki insurgents while she was working in a paddy field in Bishnupur district on Saturday, police sources said. She is survived by her husband and three children.
In Jiribam, the 31-year-old woman and her three children were in their house when the attack happened. A group of suspected Meitei insurgents set several other houses on fire.
The civil society organisation Hmar Inpui in a statement alleged the suspected Meitei insurgents shot the mother of three children in her leg, "rendering her unable to escape."
"Disregarding her humanity and her family's unimaginable grief, the attackers raped, tortured and burned her alive, denying her even the dignity of an honourable burial," the Hmar Inpui alleged.
Jiribam Superintendent of Police Kh Robinsun Singh in a letter to the district magistrate sought permission to get the autopsy done with video recording in Silchar Medical College and Hospital in neighbouring Assam.
The district police chief said Jiribam doesn't have a forensic medicine facility, and transport to the state capital Imphal will be "inconvenient" due to the ethnic tension.
In the Bishnupur incident reported today, the woman was working in a paddy field with other farmers when suspected Kuki insurgents opened fire from the nearby hills, police sources said, adding she died on the spot.
Sapam Ongbi Sonia Devi, a farmer from the Meitei community, who was shot dead by suspected Kuki insurgents while she was working in a paddy field
Most of the paddy fields in Manipur's low-lying valley areas, including Bishnupur's Saiton, where the attack happened today, are near the foothills where suspected Kuki insurgents operate disguised as 'village defence volunteers', Meitei civil society groups have alleged.
Huge protests have broken out in Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi and Churachandpur district, seeking justice for the family of the woman who was allegedly raped and killed in Jiribam. Civil society organisations of the valley-dominant Meitei community have also mobilised to protest the killing of the farmer today.
The Kuki tribes and the Meiteis have been fighting since May 2023 over a range of issues such as land rights and political representation.