An armed militant group set on fire homes and vehicles in a Kuki village in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district on Monday, allegedly acting against illegal poppy cultivation.
Unofficial reports from Imphal and Kangpokpi said the affected village, where five homes and two vehicles were torched, is around 60km from Kangpokpi town. No injury or casualty has been reported.
Owning responsibility for the arson, the Zeliangrong United Front (Kamson group), a militant outfit representing the Zeliangrong Naga tribe, said in a statement that it had “intensified” its campaign against “illegal poppy cultivation, narcotics trafficking, and unlawful encroachment by illegal immigrants within the ancestral, customary, and historical territory of the Zeliangrong Inpui Naga people”.
The ZUF added: “Despite repeated public alerts and sufficient time granted for peaceful compliance, enforcement action was carried out at 12.15pm (Sunday), burnt the farm houses, farms and dismantled other essential materials against illegal poppy cultivation... in the Waphong area of the Songnung Sadar Hills, Kangpokpi
District, Manipur.”
The Kangpokpi unit of the Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO) asserted that the affected villagers “never cultivated poppy....”
The Committee on Tribal Unity (COTU), a Kuki-Zo organisation based in Kangpokpi, set a 24-hour deadline for the Manipur government to nab those involved in the arson failing which it would “impose a total shutdown” along AH2 and NH37 from Tuesday midnight to Wednesday midnight.
The COTU said that while the nation celebrates its 77th Republic Day with pomp and grandeur, the Kuki-Zo community “especially in the region of Sadar Hills is faced with insecurities and repeated threats from the proscribed ZUF faction under the leadership of S. Kamson”.
“The razing of K. Songlung (II) village... by the ZUF not only raises the question of security preparedness of the concerned authorities but demeans the constitutional authority of the Governor...,” it said.