Advocate Lianlemsiam Phaipi blames himself for not pushing harder to prosecute the Manipur unit of the BJP’s youth wing for alleged hate speech.

“Nothing was done after I filed these FIRs (a year ago). Now we have come to this (ethno-communal clashes in Manipur). Maybe if something had been done on them, it would not have come down to all this we are facing,” Phaipi said at a demonstration in New Delhi on Friday for an administration separate from Manipur.

Clashes between the largely Hindu Meiteis and the predominantly Christian Kuki tribes — sparked off by a court order on the Meteis’ demand for Scheduled Tribe status — have claimed more than 150 lives in Manipur and displaced around 60,000 people since May.

The Delhi demonstration by the Kuki-Zo Women’s Forum was to push for a “separate administration” — a new Union Territory or state comprising the Kuki-majority areas of Manipur.

Phaipi, a Kuki, said he was “angry, sad and helpless”. His family home and a school they ran in Imphal were torched and his family members briefly abducted. “At least they are alive, their dignity is intact,” he said, choking with emotion. “The mob asked them to be grateful that they are not being raped and killed…. The police just stared at them and did nothing.”

Three prominent Kuki victims of the clashes are alumni of the St. Peter School Phaipi’s family ran in Imphal’s National Games village. These include tax assistant Letminthang Haokip, who was lynched in Imphal on May 4, David Thiek, a footballer and village guard who was beheaded in Bishnupur district on July 2, and Nancy Chingthianniang, who witnessed her husband and mother-in-law being lynched while she herself was severely assaulted.

Many at Friday’s meeting wore T-shirts with Thiek’s image and the slogans, “We are David”, and “Separate Administration Only Solution”.

Mary Grace Zou, convener of the Kuki-Zo Women’s Forum, Delhi and National Capital Region, speaks at the demonstration at Jantar Mantar on Friday. Pheroze L Vincent

“I want to wake up one day without the fear of seeing my house being burned down or my family kidnapped. We lived in Imphal for 26 years but what if we go back and they start killing again? It just takes a bullet from either side to start it all over again and ethnic cleansing will happen. For our safety and security we need a separate administration…. Before all this I wasn’t much bothered about issues like autonomy, but now with what we have experienced the demand for separation is driven by a mass movement,” Phaipi told The Telegraph.

His family now lives in Churachandpur. Phaipi, who studied at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, said he could not return to his practice in Manipur High Court and plans to file a petition in the Supreme Court — in addition to those already being heard — on the clashes.

After the arrest of separatist leader Mark T. Haokip in Delhi last year, Phaipi had filed two FIRs against the use of slurs such as “enemy-aliens and illegal migrants from Myanmar” to describe Kukis on the BJP-affiliated Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s Facebook page.

Lhing Doungel said her hands shivered when she was given a single-barrel hunting rifle to defend her home in Kangpokpi district’s Saikul village. She has taken a semester off from her university in Bangalore where she is pursuing her PhD. Both she and her husband, a professional sportsperson, are now village guards.

“How can you call us refugees? I am Indian and I will die an Indian. Why should I have to come here and cry for my rights? I am a citizen. You think you have won the war. The moment you touched a woman’s body, you have already been defeated,” she said, breaking down with emotion on stage while referring to the parading of two Kuki women naked in Thoubal district on May 4. The video of the incident earlier this month compelled Prime Minister Narendra Modi to break his silence on the clashes more than two months into the strife.

“The government should hang its head in shame that a woman has to hold a gun to defend herself. I couldn’t hold the gun. It was so big…. But I will defend my people to the end,” said Doungel.

She told this newspaper that her husband has good relations with Meitei players and she too is in touch with her Meitei friends.

“Many Kukis who fled Imphal said that they were saved by Meitei families. But we can’t access the valley anymore. Nothing less than a Union Territory with a legislature can protect our lives,” said Doungel, who flew to Delhi from Nagaland’s Dimapur for the meeting. She said it was too risky to go to Imphal.

“The Manipur we see is far away, in the bunkers of the Meitei village opposite ours where policemen stand guard, looking at us in our bunkers…. There is no way back,” she added.

Mary Grace Zou, the convener of the Kuki-Zo Women’s Forum in the National Capital Region who organised the meeting, said: “The atrocities committed against us by radical Meiteis have left deep wounds on our collective consciousness…. It is very difficult to now believe the Meiteis who claim they want to be integrated with us.”