Hundreds of Kuki-Zo women in Kangpokpi district in Manipur “cried, prayed and pleaded” with Assam Rifles troops not to leave a village bordering the Meitei-majority Imphal West, given the volatile situation in the buffer zone between the two districts.

The women staged a 12-hour dharna at Gamgiphai village, about 17km from the Kangpokpi district headquarters, from around 2am after they came to know that the Assam Rifles personnel deployed in the peripheral area had been shifted to Churachandpur, over 110km away, by the state government. The Assam Rifles is a paramilitary force commanded by army officers.

The women blocked the road so that the Assam Rifles personnel cannot leave, Lamminlun Singsit, secretary of the Kangpokpi-based Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), told The Telegraph.

“They were crying, praying and pleading with the AR personnel not to leave after coming to know that the government has shifted them to Churachandpur,” he said.

“They (the Assam Rifles troops) had been deployed in the buffer zone. There is a fear that removing central forces without adequate replacement will expose the area to attack from well-equipped Meitei militants. Replacements need to be sent first. Our village volunteers with hunting guns are no match for them. This is the reason the womenfolk held the dharna,” the CoTU leader said.

He said that an Assam Rifles officer told the women that the government order asking the troops to move to Churachandpur “has been cancelled”.

The dharna started around 2am and ended around 2.30pm.

The CoTU leader said they also imposed a 12-hour shutdown in Kangpokpi against multiple issues, including the deployment of state forces at Moreh in Tengnoupal district and the burning and looting of Kuki-Zo houses in Imphal over the past two days. Two abandoned houses were set on fire in Imphal on Wednesday, and the police have arrested three persons for the arson.

The dharna by the womenfolk, the CoTU shutdown and the seven-day-long NH102 blockade at Tengnoupal to prevent the movement of a 75-member state police force, especially Meitei personnel, to the border town of Moreh reflect the “total trust deficit” between the two communities, sources said.

The state police forces have been accused by Kuki-Zo organisations of “siding” with radical Meitei groups in the ongoing conflict that has left at least 158 dead and 60,000 displaced from both communities.

Meitei-based organisations, on the other hand, blame Kuki-Chin infiltrators from neighbouring Myanmar, the cross-border narco-terror network and Kuki extremist groups for the conflict.