Villagers protest at Silchar Medical College, claim 10 killed in Manipur were not militants

Silchar, Nov 14: A group of villagers, who accompanied the bodies of 10 militants sent for postmortem to Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH) from Jiribam in Manipur, claim that the deceased were not militants, but village volunteers who had been guarding their lands.

The villagers, including relatives of the deceased from the Kuki community, allege that the individuals were "wrongly" branded as militants by the security forces.

“These are our village volunteers, not militants. They were protecting our lands in the village, and now they have been unjustly killed and labelled as militants,” a villager told The Assam Tribune.

The situation grew tense as the group, stationed outside the hospital, started chanting slogans, expressing frustration with the alleged delay in postmortem of the bodies that were brought to the SMCH on Tuesday evening.

While the postmortem had been completed for six of the 10 bodies, the remaining inquests were delayed due to a “lack of adequate documentation”, according to hospital officials.

The group demanded the immediate completion of the process and the release of the bodies. “We demand the immediate completion of postmortem and the return of the bodies to us. If not, we will take them to Meghalaya or Mizoram for postmortem, but not here in Assam,” one of them declared.

Some individuals in the group also alleged that they had been harassed by Manipur police officers who brought the bodies to SMCH. “We have no intention of causing chaos in Assam. We are peacefully protesting here for our rights. But we have been harassed by some Manipur police officers here, who even pointed guns at us, which is unconstitutional,” said another villager.

In response, the Cachar Police deployed additional forces at the hospital to ensure the situation did not escalate further. Later in the night, a senior police official confirmed that the situation had been brought under control, though Cachar Superintendent of Police Numal Mahatta was unavailable for comment at the time of filing this report.

On Thursday, the Cachar Police conducted foot patrols and area searches in Tupidhar, a region near the Assam-Manipur border in a bid to prevent unauthorised entries and maintain regional stability.

Earlier on November 11, security forces led by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), gunned down 11 militants in Jakurador, located in Borobekra sub-division of Manipur's Jiribam district.

Detailing the events of the gunbattle in a press meet on November 12, IGP Operations IK Muivah informed that the miscreants used rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and other sophisticated weapons, such as AK-47s, Insas rifles, and Self-Loading Rifles (SLRs).

Regarding claims from Kuki organisations that the ten individuals killed in Jiribam were actually village volunteers and not militants, Muivah said that the presence of sophisticated weapons clearly indicated that these individuals were militants, as their intent was to create trouble.