Imphal, Oct. 26: Today’s Manipur bandh, called by the Kuki Students Organisation (KSO) to protest against the killing of a rifleman on Wednesday, did not have much impact in the state except in the Kuki-dominated areas.

A police team had gunned down Tongthang Haokip, a rifleman of the 1st Battalion of Manipur Rifles, near the Palace Gate in Imphal East when he was allegedly on his way to collect money from an official of the Chandel division of the public health engineering (PHE) department.

Haokip, a member of the Kuki community, was the security guard of former minister C. Doungel.

Imphal East superintendent of police L. Kailun alleged that the rifleman was a cadre of the militant Kuki National Army (KNA) and was coming with another person to collect Rs 4.5 lakh from the PHE official, L. Sanatombi Singh, and a driver of the department. He said Haokip had collected Rs 3 lakh earlier that day from the same official.

Haokip’s accomplice, Thenkholun Haokip, was a rifleman of the 2nd Battalion of Manipur Rifles. The police said he was also hit during the firing and fell into a nearby river. He is yet to be traced.

The KSO called the dawn-to-dusk bandh to demand a judicial inquiry into the killing of the rifleman, punishment to the personnel involved, a government job for a member of his family and payment of salary and other entitlements to the family. The organisation also wants the missing rifleman to be traced.

A police officer said, “It was a clear case of killing of a KNA cadre in an encounter, while he was coming to collect money. It is only that he turned out to be a rifleman.”

Haokip’s body has been kept at the forensic wing of the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences as the family members are refusing to accept it.