Manipur districts tense after day of violence
GUWAHATI
Two districts of Manipur remained tense on Friday (June 20, 2025), a day after unknown gunmen injured a Meitei farmer and a Kuki woman was shot dead later.
A shutdown was observed across the Churachandpur district, dominated by the Kuki-Zo people, to protest the woman's killing. She was identified as Hoikholhing Haokip, the wife of the chief of Langchingmanbi village adjoining the Bishnupur district, where the Meitei farmer was attacked.
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum had called the shutdown, demanding 'immediate action against those responsible for this atrocity, concrete steps from the Centre to ensure the protection of tribal lives and territory, and an independent investigation into the repeated buffer zone violations.'
The people of Bishnupur, one of the five districts comprising the Meitei-majority Imphal Valley, continued to block a highway leading to the Churachandpur district. They demanded the arrest of the assailants of farmer Ningthoujam Biren Singh, who was shot in his left arm on Thursday.
Earlier, the Manipur Police said the security forces came under fire from unknown armed miscreants after the farmer was shot in Bishnupur's Phubala area. '...the forces retaliated accordingly. During the crossfire, one woman from Langchingmanbi village was found dead with a bullet injury,' it said.
Manipur, scarred by the ethnic conflict between the Kuki-Zos and Meiteis, was relatively calm after the imposition of the President's Rule on February 13 this year. More than 250 people had died and some 60,000 were displaced in the clashes that had erupted on May 3, 2023.
Also read | Manipur marks two years of ethnic violence by remembering victims
Meanwhile, the All Manipur United Clubs' Organisation (AMUCO) condemned the Phubala incident, saying it suspected a conspiracy between the attackers and the security forces. It said the incident happened near a bunker of the Sashastra Seema Bal, whose personnel were inactive.
The organisation underlined the importance of holding accountable the security personnel found complicit or negligent, apart from the attackers. 'The people of Manipur express deep dissatisfaction with the Ministry of Home Affairs' performance, as the region continues to grapple with ongoing conflicts and violence despite the government's claims of working towards restoring normalcy,' the AMUCO said.
The organisation also questioned the work done by security adviser Kuldiep Singh, who was sent by the Centre to resolve the ongoing crisis plaguing the State.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
40 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Sowing seeds of mistrust in Assam
Sobjer Ali is a man of routine. Every day, for nearly 50 years, he has travelled by boat between Kuntirchar Part 2, the village where he lives in Dhubri district of Assam, and Patharghat, where he ran a shop selling cattle feed. The routine, disturbed in the past sometimes by festivals, floods, and communal conflicts, was disrupted on June 14 when his world turned upside down. The shop that sustained Ali's family of six was one of the 110 deemed illegal and demolished by the local authorities. This happened a week after the body parts of cattle were allegedly found on successive days near a Hanuman temple about 2 kilometres away, triggering anger in the district. Dhubri, the headquarters of the Muslim-majority Dhubri district, is 290 km west of Guwahati. It is bounded by the Brahmaputra river and its tributary, Gadadhar, on three sides. The town stands close to where the Brahmaputra becomes the Yamuna after flowing past the India-Bangladesh border. Dhubri is also used as a metaphor by some communities and political parties to underline the fear that drives politics in Assam — of how the influx of people from Bangladesh can one day overrun 'indigenous' Indians. 'We have endured worse situations, but aage keu pete laathi maarey nai (no one snatched away our sources of livelihood earlier),' said Ali. 'We have been paying ₹50 per week to the municipality through a lessee who renews our lease every year. We barely had an hour to salvage our wares before the demolition started.' He said he cannot understand why he was punished for what miscreants did elsewhere in the town. Over the last few weeks, a string of similar incidents involving cattle have kept Dhubri on edge. On June 10, citing instances of pieces of meat being purportedly thrown in public places after Eid celebrations, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma alleged that beef is being 'weaponised' against Hindus in the State. Stressing that the Assamese people have to take a 'non-compromising' stance to push back 'illegal foreigners,' Sarma maintained that the State was waging a struggle against forces which had 'sympathisers' across the world. The spark Patharghat, a ferry point on the bank of the Brahmaputra in Dhubri, is about 200 metres from a park called the Netai Dhubuni Ghat. This was constructed in honour of a washerwoman, Dhubri, from whom the district gets its name. Flanking this park along an 800 m stretch of road are several places of worship that once made Dhubri a religious confluence. These include a Ram temple, a Kali temple, the Panchpeer dargah, the Gurudwara Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib, and an Armenian church. The offices of the Dhubri District Commissioner and Senior Superintendent of Police are located on the stretch from Patharghat to the Armenian church, which was converted into a ladies' club years ago. According to the Chief Minister, around Eid-al-Adha on June 7, 'miscreants' scribbled some 'provocative' words on the walls of some structures in this high-security zone. He suggested to the media that the words were written by people who belonged to Nobin Bangla, a group that reportedly espoused the merger of Dhubri with Bangladesh. He also said that the 'head of a cow' was discovered at the 35-year-old Hanuman temple in the town's Baluchar Ward No. 3 on June 8, the day after the qurbani (sacrifice) Eid. The Hanuman temple is situated on about half an acre of land owned by a man named Vishal Agarwal. He works as a distributor of soft drinks for the Dhubri region. Unlike conventional temples, it is a small, rectangular, tin-roofed concrete structure about 6 feet in height. This plot of land is surrounded by two lanes, a school, and the office of the Seemanta Chetana Mancha, an international-border-areas-specific wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Dhubri Baluchar Kabarsthan (cemetery) is located across one of the lanes, while an office of the Forest Department is across the other. The temple is also located about 50 m from the Dhubri Magistrate Colony and diagonally across the Iddgah Field, behind which is a Muslim locality. On the night of June 8, after the alleged sight of the cow's head sparked tension, the authorities dismantled 12 makeshift shops run by Muslims along the wall of the Iddgah Field after right-wing protesters claimed that they sold beef and other illegal items. The Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021, provides for the preservation of cattle by regulating their slaughter, consumption, and transportation in the State. Agarwal declined to speak on the beef controversy surrounding the temple on his plot. He said that much of the land used to be a jute warehouse until a decade ago. He also said that he had engaged Ramjan Ali Sheikh, the first man to be arrested when pieces of beef were again found on June 9, nearly at the same spot, as a guard, because Sheikh's uncle used to be the guard earlier. 'My son performed his duty diligently. Like any other day, he came home on the morning of June 9 for breakfast,' said Sheikh's mother, Amina Begum. 'Many policemen were posted in the area around the temple from the night before. In the morning, the police summoned my son as they suspected him of having placed the beef in the temple. He has been in lock-up since.' Hers is one of the seven Muslim families in the Hindu-majority Baluchar locality. According to Masud Zaman, an advocate associated with the Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), the discovery of cattle body parts for the second time despite watertight security reflected a possible design to let the situation get out of hand. 'The police picked up 18 people randomly without going after the real culprits behind the incident. Some of us stayed at the police station until 2.30 in the morning on June 10 to get some of these people released. They included a minor boy, a kidney patient, a government employee on hospital duty, and a man with a terminally ill daughter,' he said. Among at least 50 others arrested over the next few days was Noor Islam Haque of Gaspara village, known to beg and sleep on the streets in the administrative hub of Dhubri. Zaman said that the local authorities handled the situation well after the first incident on June 8. A committee comprising members of the Seemanta Chetana Mancha, Muslims, and members of other organisations decided that they would maintain peace at any cost. 'After the second incident took place on June 9, schools were closed on June 10. But everything was normal from the next day,' he said. 'Then the Chief Minister arrived on June 13 and said that he would issue an order to shoot on sight those who were pelting stones. This gave the impression that there is total unrest in Dhubri.' A string of incidents From June 14, incidents similar to those at the Dhubri temple were reported elsewhere in Assam. The Chief Minister posted on X that beef was allegedly thrown near a Kali temple at Lakhipur in the adjoining Goalpara distric; the head of a cow was allegedly found at Borpukhuri in central Assam's Hojai for the second time in less than a week; and skulls of cows were allegedly discarded near a namghar, a neo-Vaishnavite prayer hall, in north-eastern Assam's Lakhimpur district. The police arrested more than a dozen people in connection with these incidents. Piklu Paul, the vice-president of the Dhubri unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said that the Hindus in the district have always lived under pressure. In the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, up to 14 people were killed and curfew was imposed for more than a month. There was relatively less violence in 2012 as a fallout of the Bodo tribal-Muslim conflict in the adjoining Bodoland Territorial Region. 'We are grateful to the Chief Minister for shoot-at-sight orders, which have kept the miscreants indoors after dusk. Dhubri could have burned had this tough step not been taken,' he said. Senior Congress leader Rakibul Hussain, who ended the AIUDF's 15-year run in the Dhubri Lok Sabha constituency in 2024, chose to stay out of the controversy. But Kazi Mahmudul, a local Congress leader, was ready to speak. 'We have no complaints if those responsible for such a heinous act are punished according to the law, but carrying out demolition drives ostensibly linked to the Hanuman temple incident is painful,' he said. 'The government has the right to evict people from the land it owns, but there is a process to be followed. One has to give time to people who have been living in certain areas for decades.' Other party leaders said no 'true Muslim' would place beef near a place of worship of people belonging to another religion. The drive has hit Jaharuddin, a Dhubri resident, who pulled a handcart to deliver goods from Patharghat to dealers across the town. 'The government should be lenient with demolitions so that we survive,' he said. Cattle smuggling Dhubri residents believe that an application filed by the Dhubri Iddgah Committee to the district authorities, seeking to bring in about 4,000 cattle for qurbani (sacrifice) on Eid, was the genesis of the trouble. The committee issued 'membership cards', valid up to June 7, to procure the cattle. 'But the number of cattle brought in from West Bengal via Boxirhat (town bordering Assam) from June 3-5 was some 4 lakh,' a member of the Seemanta Chetana Mancha said. 'This caused a traffic jam on the highway. Thousands of people, each with a bull or cow on a leash, were walking along the road as if they were enjoying some kind of patronage. They paraded through Hindu areas, hurting the sentiments of many.' After local Hindus raised a hue and cry about the cattle passing through a security cordon along the inter-State border easily, and in violation of the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, the government took steps to check the inflow. But these measures had a minimal effect. During his visit to Dhubri, Chief Minister Sarma said that a new network of cattle smugglers had increased its activities over the last few months and was bringing in cattle in large numbers from West Bengal. He vowed to crack down on this 'network' while asserting the government's commitment to enforcing law and order and defeating all communal forces. Both Hindus and Muslims, however, have started doubting the government's intention. Zaman said that the authorities 'showed a tendency to arrest petty criminals' for the Hanuman temple incident and not those who allegedly violated the cattle transportation law. The district is notorious for cattle smuggling to Bangladesh, where a cow fetches twice the average price of ₹30,000 in Assam. Some residents allege that the smugglers operate in nexus with a section of the district officials and the police, who, according to them, get a cut of up to 10%. Dhubri's Senior Superintendent of Police, Leena Doley, dismissed allegations that the police were refusing to arrest illegal cattle traders. 'We have rounded up a few, and the process is ongoing,' she said. She replaced Navin Singh, who was transferred out of Dhubri a week after the incident at the Hanuman temple. As many as 164 police personnel, including 34 sub-inspectors, were also transferred out of the district. 'The message has gone out that the government will not tolerate disturbance of any kind. The situation is totally under control now,' District Commissioner Dibakar Nath said. Uneasy neighbours Local BJP leaders blamed the Congress for keeping the district on edge. They said that the Congress had fuelled riots after the Babri Masjid demolition and had also let the situation deteriorate in 2012. They also said that it was not a coincidence that the incident at the Hanuman temple had happened a year after the Congress wrested the Dhubri parliamentary seat from the AIUDF. Congress leaders, on the other hand, said that they were not surprised by the BJP's bid to project the AIUDF as a more secular party, as it was the 'B-team' of the saffron brigade. Referring to the Dhubri incident, State Congress president Gaurav Gogoi said that the RSS and its affiliates, including the BJP, were fanning communal sentiments ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections. 'Investigations should be carried out against all those arrested for placing beef and parts of a cow in public places, including religious institutions, but those who put such ideas in the minds of miscreants should be probed too. Such incidents are part of the pre-election strategy of the BJP-RSS to hide their failures,' he said. Chief Minister Sarma retaliated, asking Gogoi to submit proof before accusing Hindus of fomenting trouble. 'If Hindus have to throw meat, they will throw pork, not beef,' he said. At Baluchar, the seeds of distrust between Hindus and Muslims, sown years ago, seem to have sprouted. Paresh Das, a trader, said, 'This was not the first time that go-mangsho (beef) was placed near the Hanuman temple. We know it will not be the last time, either. As the minority community, we have to tolerate this. We just hope that our sentiments are respected.' 'Dhubri has not been an example of communal harmony, but economic compulsions often forced the people to apply the brakes after briefly attacking each other,' said 83-year-old Md Abdul Sattar Mollah, a former employee of a match factory. 'I was drawn into riots when I was young. Thankfully, no one got killed this time. But the cold stares and animosity in the eyes of people now is worse than death.'
India Today
an hour ago
- India Today
Delhi court allows extradition of man to stand rape trial in Scotland
A Delhi Court has allowed the extradition of a fugitive to stand trial in Scotland for sexual assault, rape and communicating Chief Judicial Magistrate Pranav Joshi was hearing the matter over the Centre's December 2024 order appointing and requesting the court to inquire into the extradition request by determining whether a prima facie case was made out against the fugitive criminal (FC) Naijil an order dated June 9, the court said, "Union of India is requested to extradite the FC Naijil Paul to the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for standing trial of the indictment charges against the FC before the High Court of Judiciary at Glasgow, Scotland through diplomatic channel." Till formalities of extradition were complete, Paul would remain in Tihar prison, it avoid criminal prosecution in the UK, Paul fled to India but was arrested from Kochi in Kerala and brought to the national to the Centre's order, the United Kingdom government submitted a request for Paul's extradition, who was "wanted to stand trial in connection with the offences allegedly committed in Scotland" for sexual assault, communicating indecently among other conduct under Indian laws amount to offence under Section 63 (rape), Section 74 (sexual assault), Section 75 (sexual harassment), Section 79 (word, gesture to act to outrage the modesty of a woman) of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita which are punishable with more than one year imprisonment," it said.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
CoTU enforces indefinite shutdown in Churachandpur
1 2 Imphal: An indefinite shutdown has begun in Churachandpur district while the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) has called for a 24-hour shutdown in Kangpokpi district from 1pm on Friday, following the killing of Hoikholhing Haokip, wife of the village chief of Langchingmanbi. The shutdown has affected normal lives in both the districts. The decision to impose the shutdown was endorsed by CoTU, supported by civil society organisations (CSOs) of Churachandpur and Kangpokpi districts. According to a media note issued by police, an operation was launched after Ningthoujam Biren Singh, a farmer from Phubala Awang Maning Leikai, suffered a bullet injury in his left arm allegedly fired upon by unidentified armed miscreants while working in his paddy field on Thursday. During the operation, armed miscreants opened fire on the security forces who retaliated. Amid the crossfire, Kuki woman Haokip was found dead with a bullet injury. Security personnel identified her as the wife of the village chief of Langchingmanbi. Authorities transported her body to the district hospital in Churachandpur for legal formalities. Police said cases have been registered and investigations are underway while combined security forces are continuing search operations to track down those involved. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Free P2,000 GCash eGift UnionBank Credit Card Apply Now Undo Meanwhile, CoTU has also termed the incident as 'another targeted assault in what has now become a systematic campaign' and blamed the state govt as directly responsible for allowing such atrocities to unfold under its watch. CoTU alleged that Meitei aggressors were being allowed to act unchecked and that failure to protect vulnerable populations had once again led to loss of life. CoTU put forward three demands — immediate action against those responsible for the killing, concrete steps from the central govt to safeguard tribal lives and territories and an independent investigation into repeated violations of buffer zone arrangements. Calling upon all communities, institutions, organisations and individuals, CoTU has urged strict observance of the shutdown. The Kuki Women Organisation for Human Rights has also strongly condemned the killing of Haokip, calling it a horrific act of violence. Meanwhile, the inspector general of police and other top officials conducted an inspection at the site of the recent Phubala firing incident, where suspected Kuki armed miscreants allegedly opened fire on farmers ploughing in the low canal areas, injuring a farmer. In response to the incident, the Apunba Meira Paibi of Phubala, along with various civil society organisations, held a joint meeting. Although no official statement has been released about the meeting, no reports of a shutdown have emerged so far — despite an earlier announcement by a Meira Paibi leader calling for a shutdown. The leader had demanded that the chief secretary, security advisor, and the governor of Manipur visit the affected site and ensure justice for the farmers.
