The body of a woman believed to be among the six Meitei persons who had been missing from Manipur’s Jiribam district since November 11 was found floating on the Barak river in Assam’s Cachar district on Sunday morning.
The two districts share an inter-state border.
“The body of the elderly woman was found floating in Barak river near Lakhipur sub-division and was recovered by Cachar Police this morning,” a Jiribam-based Assam Rifles official confirmed to Scroll.
A senior official in the Manipur Police told Scroll that the woman likely belonged to a group of three women and three children who had gone missing from Jiribam after violence on November 11, during which suspected Kuki militants had set some shops on fire in the Jakuradhor Karong area.
After a video of the woman’s body came to be widely shared on social media, a mob descended on the Hmar village of Kalinagaar in Jiribam and torched around seven to eight abandoned homes, security personnel told Scroll on the condition of anonymity.
The bodies of a woman and two children believed to be among the group were found floating on the Barak river on Friday evening. One woman and a child from the group remain missing.
The six persons who had gone missing on November 11 were a grandmother, her two daughters and three grandchildren. Meitei groups allege that they were abducted by armed Hmar men when they attacked the area on Monday morning.
After the three bodies were found on Friday evening, an emergency Cabinet meeting of the Manipur government was held around 10 pm. A decision was taken to declare any organisations or individuals associated with the attack on women and children in Jiribam on November 11 as unlawful.
A curfew was imposed in Imphal West district on Saturday as protests erupted after the bodies were found on Friday. Internet and mobile data services were also suspended in Imphal West, Imphal East, Bishnupur, Thoubal, Kakching, Kangpokpi and Churachandpur districts for two days as tensions escalated.
This came as a mob stormed and vandalised the home of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA and Manipur chief minister’s son-in-law Rajkumar Imo Singh, an Assam Rifles official told Scroll.
A mob had also tried to storm Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s ancestral home in Imphal East’s Heingang area on Saturday evening but were restrained before they could do so, an Assam Rifles official told Scroll.
Army and Assam Rifles personnel have since been deployed in Imphal, the Manipur Police said in a statement on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Manipur government has requested the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from the jurisdictions of six police stations in the state. This came after a state Cabinet meeting on Friday.
On Thursday, AFSPA was reimposed in the areas of six police stations – Sekmai and Lamsang in Imphal West district, Lamlai in Imphal East district, Jiribam in Jiribam district, Leimakhong in Kangpokpi district and Moirang in Bishnupur district – following a surge in ethnic violence that has reportedly left at least 17 dead since November 7.
Tensions between the state’s Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities escalated into widespread conflict in May 2023, resulting in over 237 deaths and the displacement of over 59,000 individuals.
AFSPA, which grants significant powers to the armed forces, including the authority to search premises, arrest individuals without warrants and open fire if deemed necessary to maintain public order, has long been controversial in Manipur.
It was first imposed in 1980 when the state was declared a “disturbed area” under the Act, but was partially lifted in 2004 after public outcry over the killing of 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama.
Since then, the state’s area covered under AFSPA has gradually reduced. By April 2022, it had been lifted from 15 police stations across six districts and by April 1, 2023, it had been withdrawn from an additional four police stations, totalling 19 police station areas – all located in Meitei-majority regions.
The reimposition came after the gunfight in Jiribam on November 11, in which 10 suspected Kuki militants were killed by security forces. Kuki-Zo-Hmar groups claimed that those killed were village volunteers, a term used to describe armed civilians protecting their communities since the outbreak of violence between the two communities in May 2023.
Also read: Why Hmar groups are protesting delay in handing over bodies of 10 alleged militants in Manipur