The Supreme Court on Monday sought a report from the Central Forensic Laboratory on an audiotape that, according to an NGO, contains comments by Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh that reveal his purportedly partisan stand and complicity in the ethnic unrest in the state.
The Manipur government has dismissed the audiotape as “doctored” but Kuki-Zo organisations claim they show the BJP chief minister’s pro-Meitei stand and “partisan complicity” in the 21-month-old conflict between Meiteis and Kuki-Zos.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the NGO and petitioner Kuki Organisation for Human Rights Trust, said Singh could be heard saying in the audio that he had allowed Meitei groups to loot arms from the state armoury during the riots.
Bhushan claimed the conversation was recorded by one of the participants in a closed-door meeting held by the chief minister.
He added that a private testing centre, Truth Lab, had “confirmed with 93 per cent certainty” that the voice in the tape belonged to Singh.
However, the bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar directed solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, representing the central government, to get a report from the government lab and submit it in a sealed cover.
Justice Khanna observed orally that the situation in Manipur was limping back to normalcy and that the court would examine the matter at the next hearing.
The matter has been posted to March 24.
Mehta had earlier questioned the maintainability of the public interest plea, arguing the petitioner had a hidden agenda and carried “ideological baggage with a
separatist mindset”.
He said a three-judge committee had rued that although the situation in Manipur was returning to normalcy, some people wanted to “keep the pot boiling”. The allusion seemed to be to a committee, headed by former Jammu and Kashmir High Court Chief Justice Gita Mittal, that the apex court had appointed to suggest ways of ameliorating the sufferings of the victims of the Manipur strife.
Mehta also argued that the NGO should be asked to approach the high court instead of directly petitioning the Supreme Court.
On November 8 last year, a bench headed by then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud had agreed to examine the NGO’s plea.
Attorney-general R. Venkataramani and Mehta, appearing for the Centre, had then objected to the court entertaining the petition. Mehta went to the extent of saying that “judges are living in ivory towers”.
This prompted Justice Chandrachud to retort: “Not at all. We don’t appreciate any attempts to brush things under the carpet. We are well aware of the situation
in Manipur.”
However, the bench had gone on to ask Bhushan to place some material on record to show there was some prima facie authenticity to the audiotape.
Venkataramani had argued that entertaining the petition would disrupt the peace initiatives in Manipur and undermine the authority of the state high court, which the petitioner had bypassed.
Bhushan had told the court that the source of the audiotape faced a threat to his life.
A three-part report published in The Wire last August had referred to the audiotape, saying the “purported maker/s of the 48-minute recording (said) that it was done in person at a meeting where the chief minister unmistakably indicated his partisan complicity in the ongoing violence”.
A small portion of the audiotape had surfaced on social media before The Wire published its report.
The Wire report said the audiotape had been placed before the three-member commission headed by the former Gauhati High Court Chief Justice, Ajai Lamba, which the Union home ministry set up on June 4, 2023, to probe the ethnic violence.
“This material (audio file) has also been submitted to the Commission – along with an affidavit attesting to its authenticity from the person/s who made the recording at the chief minister’s official residence – and that protection and anonymity has been sought from the Commission as well,” the report in The Wire said.
The Manipur government has claimed the audiotape is “doctored”, asserting it was circulated with the objective of “inciting hatred and mistrust amongst communities” and “derail(ing) the peace initiatives launched by the state and central governments”.
It has slammed “acts of spreading misinformation/ disinformation through such doctored clips asanti-national activities.…”
Kuki-Zo organisations, however, held protest rallies in Manipur and Delhi last August, citing the audiotape to condemn Singh and reiterate their demand for a separate administration.
Manipur’s 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs too demanded that the Lamba Commission speed up its probe.
Student organisations submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the purportedly leaked recordings, “as published by The Wire”, contain “controversial and incendiary remarks attributed to Manipur Chief Minister”.
They said some of the remarks attributed to Singh raised fears of a potential escalation of violence.
The Manipur violence, which began on May 3, 2023, has left at least 260 people dead and over 60,000 displaced.