The bodies of three of the six Meiteis missing from a relief camp in Manipur’s Jiribam district since the November 11 killings were found floating in the Jiri river on Friday evening.
The identities of the two children and a woman are yet to be established. Their bodies have been sent to Silchar Medical College (SMC) in Assam’s Cachar district for
post-mortem.
The Hmar Inpui, the apex body representing the Hmar tribals, has appealed to influential figures in the Assam administration to speed up the release of the bodies of the 10 men killed in the encounter with security forces in Jiribam on November 11. The bodies are at SMC for post-mortem and other related examinations. Mass protests erupted on Friday in Kuki-Zo-majority areas of Manipur over the deaths of the men.
A leader from the Hmar Inpui told The Telegraph that they have reached out to the Cachar district administration, the Assam chief minister’s office, political leaders and other influential figures in the region, urging them to ensure that the bodies are released without further delay. The community fears that continued delays may cause unrest in Silchar, where protests have already taken place at the hospital.
“There was a delay in completing the post-mortem. Now, the Manipur administration wants to conduct DNA tests on the bodies, but we don’t think it is required when the bodies have been identified. It is unfair to keep the grieving families waiting,” he said.
The Hmar Inpui leader added: “We fear people may get irritated if there is more delay and do something untoward like creating law and order issues here (Silchar). There was sloganeering at the hospital on Thursday, which was handled appropriately by the administration.
“We thank them (the Cachar district administration) for understanding our state of mind. We don’t want any untoward incident to happen. That is why we have reached out to the Assam administration to help us get the bodies released as soon as possible,” he said.
Police had said 10 heavily “armed militants” were killed in retaliatory firing when they tried to attack the Borobekra police station and a CRPF post simultaneously in Manipur’s Jiribam district on November 11.
After the encounter, the police said they found that six inmates of a relief camp housed on the police campus had gone missing. Security forces have launched a search operation to trace the missing persons — three women and as many children from the same family — but there has been no breakthrough yet. Talks with community leaders are on to ensure their safe release.
Kuki-Zo organisations asserted that they were “innocent village volunteers on duty” to protect their ancestral land and people from “attacks by Meitei groups”.
The bodies of the deceased were flown to Cachar district in Assam on Tuesday from Jiribam for post-mortem.
Though the post-mortem on six bodies was over on Tuesday and the autopsy on the remaining four bodies was to be done on Wednesday, the process was “halted” when the issue of DNA tests cropped up, triggering allegations of “intentional” delay. The autopsy procedure on the four bodies was completed on Thursday along with DNA tests.
The hospital staff have told a couple of Kuki-Zo leaders who have been at the facility since Tuesday that the delay was because of “official paperwork”, something which did not go down well with the community members in Cachar and Manipur.
“We want the hospital authorities to hand over the bodies to us so that we can go back. The DNA test is not required... They have done DNA tests on four bodies whose post-mortems were done on Thursday. They could have taken the samples from the other six bodies and handed them to us,” the Hmar Inpui leader said.
