Residents of Manipur’s Nambol, where an ambush killed two Assam Rifles personnel and injured five on Friday evening, staged a protest on Saturday condemning the act.
The protesters, led by the Meira Paibis (women torchbearers), shouted slogans and displayed placards against the attack at a sit-in just 1km from the ambush spot before taking out a march.
Nambol is in Bishnupur, a Meitei-majority district in Imphal Valley. It borders Churachandpur, a Kuki-zo majority district.
The attack, in which a jawan from Meghalaya and another from Chhattisgarh were killed, took place in a crowded denotified area.
Denotified areas are exempted from the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which gives sweeping powers to security forces to detain, search, arrest and shoot to maintain order.
The protesters sought to know what the assailants hoped to achieve through the attack when the state was in the throes of turmoil since the eruption of the ethnic conflict on May 3, 2023, which has left at least 260 dead and 60,000 displaced.
The Armed Forces Ex-Servicemen Association Manipur, an organisation of 13,000 veterans, disapproved of the ambush and said the security forces displayed “professional restraint in withholding retaliatory fire” against the attackers, “avoiding any further collateral damage”.
Security review
Manipur governor A.K. Bhalla reviewed the security situation in a meeting held at
Raj Bhavan in Imphal in the evening.
Chief secretary, security adviser, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Eastern Command; GOC 3 Corps, commissioner (home), additional directors-general of police, and military officers attended the meeting.
The discussion stressed the “need for coordinated action among all security agencies to ensure swift identification of the perpetrators” and to further strengthen “vulnerable and sensitive areas, including highways, transit routes and border zones”.
Later, Bhalla visited the headquarters of inspector-general of Assam Rifles (South) at Mantripukhri where he paid respect to the mortal remains of the two soldiers.
Kuki condemnation
The Kuki-Zo Council (KZC) slammed the ambush “by suspected Meitei militants at Nambol Sabal Leikai in Bishnupur district — an area notably not under AFSPA”.
A KZC statement said the ambush “once again exposes the violent, anti-national, and secessionist character of the Meitei militant groups".
“This savage incident brings back the painful memory of the killing of Colonel Viplav Tripathi, his wife, and young son by Meitei militants in 2021. Such repeated assaults on India’s security forces are not isolated cases but part of a continuing pattern of hostility against the Indian State by armed Meitei groups. History has shown time and again that these militants reject the idea of India and thrive on violence and terror," the KZC said.