Two days after four Kuki-Zo people, including the mother of a serving soldier, were snatched by a mob and abducted from a vehicle at a security checkpoint in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district, police said they have found the bullet-ridden bodies of a man and a woman in two different locations in Imphal in the past 24 hours.
A police source said that the bodies “most likely” belong to the abducted persons, but noted that the “formal identification is yet to be done.”
The 65-year-old father of the soldier, who was rescued by security forces present at the spot, received multiple injuries and continues to be in a critical state at the army hospital in Guwahati.
A defence source said that efforts to trace the abducted persons are continuing. The whereabouts of two others, including another woman, is not known.
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‘Mercilessly murdered’
Kuki Inpi, an apex body of Kuki tribes, said in a statement that two people have been “mercilessly murdered” by Meitei groups. It noted that on November 7, five Kuki-Zo people — Manglun Haokip, 65; Nengkim, 60; Neilam, 55; John Thangjalam Haokip, 25; and Jamkhothang, 40 — had been travelling to L.Phaijang village in Kangpokpi district to perform customary nuptial practices when they were stopped by the mob.
“The Kuki Inpi Manipur is deeply concerned [at] the sluggish approach of the law enforcing agencies against the demands of the Kuki-Zo civil societies for the safety of the abducted individuals,” it said.
Post-mortem of bodies
The body of a middle-aged woman with a bullet wound on her head was found in the vicinity of the Tairenpokpi area in Imphal West district on Wednesday, while the body of a man, presumed to be in his forties, was found in the Takhok Mapal Makha area of Imphal East district late on Tuesday night, the Press Trust of India reported. The bodies have been sent to the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal for post-mortem examination.
Letminthang Laimanai, the son of one of the missing women, said that her family has not been approached by the police yet. “My mother and others were on their way to Leimakhong for some wedding purpose. They were abducted midway. We filed a case on Wednesday night but are yet to hear anything from the police,” the son said.
The son of the other abducted woman is an army jawan posted in Jammu and Kashmir.
Fresh tensions were reported in the valley areas of the State after two boys, identified as Maibam Avinash, 16, and Ningthoujam Anthony, 19, went missing after they visited the Sekmai area in Imphal West district on November 5 to attend a function.
Breach of agreement: ITLF
Meanwhile, the officials of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) met members of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF), a Kuki-Zo group, in Churachandpur on Thursday.
Noting that the meeting’s objective was to review their last meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah on August 8 in Delhi, an ITLF spokesperson said that the forum raised concerns about the breach of agreement in regards to the deployment of State police commandos in the border town of Moreh.
“When ITLF met the Home Minister in August, they demanded the removal of the State police forces completely from the hill areas. The minister said the Centre cannot fully remove the state police forces, but they will not let the latter act independently in the hill areas and that they should act in conjunction with the Central forces. The government admitted the lapse in this process in Moreh and promised that such lapse will not happen in the future,” the spokesperson claimed.
Separate administration demand
Regarding the political demand of a separate administration for the hill districts inhabited by Kuki-Zo people, A.K. Mishra, the Centre’s interlocutor, said that the Kuki militant groups in a Suspension of Operations (SoO) pact with the government have submitted their demands, which are now pending approval from the government.
“The interlocutor further stressed the need to create a conducive environment for the solution to progress. He requested ITLF not to resort to violent means,” said the ITLF spokesperson. The tribal forum also raised the issue of the burial of bodies that are still lying in mortuaries in Churachandpur and Imphal.
