look news india
An extremely heart-wrenching and worrying incident has come to light in the north-eastern state of Manipur amid long-simmering caste violence and active cross-border militant activities. Four innocent villagers of Tangkhul Naga community were brutally shot dead by armed militants in an ambush near Pilong village of sensitive Kamjong district along the India-Myanmar international border. This bloody incident has created an atmosphere of immense panic and anger in the entire border hilly area. The mutilated bodies of the four youths were recovered from a dense and isolated hilly area during a joint intensive search operation conducted by the state police, Assam Rifles and local Naga villagers around 1:30 am on Friday. Looking at the dead bodies, it was clear that the attackers fired bullets indiscriminately from very close range, due to which the four victims could not get any chance to recover or escape.
According to official information received from local police and administrative sources, the four persons who lost their lives in this brutal shootout have been identified as Wareshim Jajo, Fami Jajo, Batterson Jajo and Ningthem Kashak. The four deceased were local villagers who had gone to the border area for daily activities. Forensic investigation and preliminary inspection have found deep and multiple marks of bullets from automatic weapons on all the bodies. The police have completed the Panchnama of the four bodies and sent them to the mortuary of Kamjong District Hospital for legal procedures and post-mortem examination. Since the incident, there is mourning in the entire village and surrounding settlements and the atmosphere has become sad due to the mourning of the victim’s families.
Local villagers and eyewitnesses allege that on Thursday, a squad of armed militants had illegally crossed Myanmar’s open and inaccessible border and entered the Indian border area. These militants surrounded a group of five local Tangkhul Naga villagers near Pilong village and started firing on them with automatic guns without any warning. In this sudden fatal attack, four villagers bled to death on the spot and died. Fortunately, the fifth villager in the group somehow managed to escape with his life by taking the help of dense forests and mountain ravines. The same eyewitness villager reached the village and gave complete information about this barbaric massacre to the local civil organizations and security agencies, after which the security forces immediately cordoned off the area and started the search operation.
As the news of this cowardly and deadly attack spread, sharp reactions were being seen in the political and social circles of the state. Naga People’s Front (NPF) State President Awangbo Newmai has condemned this brutal massacre in the strongest terms. He publicly claimed that militant cadres associated with the Kuki National Army (KNA) were behind this well-planned attack targeting innocent Tangkhul Naga civilians near the Myanmar border. Describing this incident as a serious blow to the efforts to restore peace, Newmai has made an emotional appeal to all communities and their representatives to immediately abandon the path of violence, vengeance and armed confrontation and return to the path of peaceful co-existence. He has also demanded from the Central and State Governments that concrete and decisive steps should be taken to protect the life and property of innocent citizens in the border areas.
This latest incident that took place in Kamjong district is not the result of any isolated dispute, rather it is considered to be a bloody extension of the new ethnic and regional tension between the Naga and Kuki communities in Manipur that started in February. The sporadic clashes and land disputes that broke out in Ukhrul district in February have gradually escalated into organized ambushes and targeted civilian killings. In recent times, the fire of this caste hatred has spread to many districts. On September 13, four Kuki villagers were killed in violent attacks in different parts of Tamenglong and Noni districts, following which retaliatory attacks were carried out on Naga settlements and a Naga teenager was killed. Shortly thereafter, a 36-year-old lineman belonging to the Kuki community was shot dead in Kangpokpi district, following which there were reports of continuous firing and unrest in border Naga settlements. This bloody cycle continues to stoke the fires of vengeance from one community to another.
To maintain normalcy in the current situation in Manipur, heavy contingents of Indian Army, Assam Rifles, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), BSF and State Police are deployed round the clock in almost all sensitive areas and buffer zones. Despite this, taking advantage of the inaccessible mountainous forests and porous border of Myanmar, armed militant groups are continuously carrying out crimes by dodging the security system. Dense forests, deep trenches and lack of basic surveillance infrastructure on the border between India and Myanmar make it easy for militants to infiltrate and hide in safe havens after attacks. After this latest massacre, security forces have deployed additional military companies in Kamjong, Ukhrul and all the surrounding border areas and intensive combing operations are being carried out in the forest with the help of drone cameras and tracker dogs so that the militants who carried out this bloody game can be brought to book as soon as possible.