"Seems They Traversed Long Distance...": Manipur Police On What Happened In Jiribam

The Manipur Police said they have identified the bodies of five people found in Jiribam district following a fierce gunfight with "suspected Kuki insurgents" on Friday.

Three of the bodies have now been confirmed as Kuki insurgents from Churachandpur district; the fourth has been identified as a Kuki volunteer from Jiribam; the fifth has been identified as a member of the Meitei insurgent group United National Liberation Front (Pambei), or UNLF(P), the police said in a statement on Sunday.

The three Kuki insurgents were members of the Kuki Liberation Army (KLA), the police said, adding they suspect the three Kuki insurgents may have come from the hill district Churachandpur in southern Manipur, 230 km from Jiribam.

"... It seems they had traversed a long distance to Jiribam to execute these subversive activities," the police said.

The UNLF is the oldest Meitei insurgent group, which later broke up into two factions; the Pambei faction signed a tripartite peace agreement with the Centre and the state government in November 2023.

The KLA has two factions, one each with the two umbrella Kuki-Zo groups that have signed the controversial tripatriate Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with the state government and the Centre. Some 24-odd Kuki-Zo insurgent groups come under the two umbrella organisations called the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and the United People's Front (UPF). Sources said the leaders of the KLA factions are from the Khongsai clan.

The police said the three Kuki insurgents and the volunteer "initiated the attack" in Jiribam, killing a 63-year-old man from the Meitei community identified as Yurembam Kulendra Singha. His body was found on a bed, indicating he was shot while sleeping, his family told reporters on Saturday.

A police team that rushed to the site of the attack was fired at; the team retaliated and took control of the situation, the police said.

"A total of five bodies were found at the firing incident site..." the police said in the statement posted on X.

According to the police, the three KLA insurgents were Seiminlen Khongsai, Haogoulen Doungel, and Nehboithang Haokip. The volunteer who was killed was Lhunkhohao Haokip.

The UNLF(P) member was Baspatimayum Lakhi Kumar Sharma. He was guarding a village as a volunteer when he came under attack, his wife, holding her six-month-old baby, told local media.

Jiribam is where Meitei and Hmar leaders met for peace talks last month, along with security forces commanders. They had given a joint statement agreeing to work for peace. Churachandpur-based Kuki groups, however, had objected to the peace talks, alleging the peace talk parties did not represent their interests and met only at Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh's bidding.

The Hmar Inpui later declared it would not recognise the peace initiative and warned the individuals who participated in the meeting to "stop their blind and selfish efforts". The Hmar Inpui had said these leaders appeared to be bowing to the "whims and fancies of a divisive and communal government under the leadership of Biren Singh..."

After violence erupted in Jiribam in June, sources had told NDTV the state government had written three times in December 2023 and January this year to the Director General of Police (DGP) asking to step up security and respond to any threat in the district bordering Assam.

"It has been reported that about 200 armed Kuki-Zo militants have moved from Churachandpur and reached Phaitol village, Old and New Kaiphundai area of Tamenglong district bordering Jiribam district," the state government wrote to the DGP on January 15.

Sources had said though the Jiribam attacks in June came nearly six months after the government sent the first letter, the insurgents would have been waiting for the "right time" to strike.

There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley. The clashes between the Meitei community and the 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, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.

The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who 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.