Tension high in Manipur Valley after recovery of 3 bodies in Jiribam, security tightened

Imphal/Aizawl, Nov 16 (IANS) High tension was prevailing in the districts of the Manipur Valley region on Saturday after the recovery of three bodies in violence-hit Jiribam district even as police were yet to confirm whether the bodies were of any of the six people missing there since the November 11 encounter.

A police official said that a huge contingent of security personnel, comprising Central forces and state police, were deployed in all the five to six districts in the valley region, inhabited by the majority Meitei community people.

A large number of government schools, colleges, shops, private organisations, and other establishments were closed due to the tension and possible unrest.

Senior police and security officials closely supervising the situation, the official said.

Chief Minister N. Biren Singh held an urgent meeting with senior ministers late on Friday night to discuss the situation after the news of the recovery of the three bodies.

The official in Imphal said that the three bodies, found near a river late on Friday evening, have not yet been identified. The bodies were taken to the Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH) for post-mortem examination, he said.

Six people — an elderly woman, her two daughters, and three minor grandchildren — have been missing since November 11 after the Borobekra violence, in which 10 “Kuki militants” were killed in a fierce encounter with the Central Reserve Police Force.

The women and the children, belonging to the majority Meitei community, had been living in a relief camp set up near the Borobekra police station after violence gripped the mixed-population Jiribam district since June.

Many organisations including the Meitei-dominated groups have been claiming that these six people were kidnapped by the armed militants, who had attacked the CRPF camp on November 11 morning. Following the attack, the CPRF retaliated and 10 ‘militants’ were killed in the encounter.

Tribal organisations, however, claimed that the 10 slain people were not militants, they were ‘Kuki Village Volunteers protecting villagers’.

The police official said that during the search operations after the fierce encounter in Jakuradhor village, where several houses were also burnt down by the armed militants, two bodies of elderly civilians — Maibam Kesho Singh, 75, and Laishram Barel, 61 — were found. He said that another person was found alive and rescued and another civilian came back on his own to the police station while the six people remained untraced so far.

The two victims and the remaining two, found alive, belong to the Meitei community.

Meanwhile, hundreds of men and women held a candlelight march in neighbouring Mizoram’s Aizawl on Friday night to express grief and protest over the killing of 10 people “belonging to the Hmar tribal community” in Jiribam on November 11.

During the candlelight march, participants shouted slogans, condemning the killings of tribals in Manipur. They blamed both the state government and the Centre for “failing to contain the ethnic violence between the Meitei people and the Kuki-Zo community”.

The protesters also demanded that the bodies of 10 people kept at the mortuary of SMCH in southern Assam be handed over to the kin for the last rites.

–IANS

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