About 50 Kuki students hid for nearly four hours in the bushes on the Manipur University campus in Imphal on May 3 night as stick-wielding rioters stormed the central varsity and targeted the hostels, suggest accounts that are beginning to trickle out.

Two Kuki students who shared a flat outside the campus got chased and thrashed, and a woman student hid at a neighbour’s as a mob rampaged through her Imphal locality.

Four Kuki students of Manipur University — who have now left Imphal for their homes in the state’s hills or are staying with relatives in Nagaland and Assam — have described to The Telegraph over the phone the “harrowing experience” they underwent last week.

One of them said the rioters had returned to the empty hostels on May 4 and burnt down Kuki students’ certificates, documents and thesis write-ups, hanging a cloud over their careers.

There were no attacks on the other central educational institutions, such as the NIT and the IIIT in Imphal, but most of their outstation students have left for home on their own or with the help of their state governments.

An NIT teacher said that while the tribal Kukis faced the brunt of the violence in Imphal and other parts of the Manipur valley, where the Meiteis are in the majority, the Meiteis were at the receiving end in the state’s hills where the tribal communities are concentrated.

An MSc student of botany at Manipur University told this newspaper that he stayed in Hostel 6 with seven other Kuki students. On the night of May 3, the day violence broke out between Meiteis and Kukis, he received a message from a friend asking him to leave the hostel immediately.

The message said that rioters were marching towards the hostels on the campus and would attack Kuki students.

“We knew the main gates were closed; and it was not safe to venture onto the streets, anyway. My friends and I ran towards the bushes,” the student said.

“We hid there from around 9pm. The stick-wielding rioters entered the hostels and later approached the bushes and threw stones. We called an Assam Rifles officer, who asked us to wait. The officer came at 12.50am. We went to their camp on the campus.”

The botany student alleged the rioters returned to the hostels the following morning and burnt the Kuki boarders’ belongings. He said his academic certificates got destroyed.

He added that a friend who was doing his PhD in biochemistry had finished several chapters of his thesis, which the rioters burnt. The PhD scholar could not be contacted.

A Kuki student of MA English who stays near the campus said: “I saw a group of rioters near my lodgings at 10pm on May 3. A friend (flatmate) and I ran into the paddy fields. They chased and caught us.”

He added: “We were badly beaten with sticks and taken to a Meitei political leader’s home. We were told that we were not ‘original Manipuris’. They later handed us over to the police.”

Another student of MA English, who too stays outside the campus in rented accommodation, said a mob of about 100 had raided her neighbourhood on May 3. She ran into a neighbour’s home and was saved.

After the rioters returned the following day, she went to the Assam Rifles camp in the night.

A former student who now leads a Kuki students’ association said: “The university knew the situation was tense outside but did not ask for the deployment of security forces in front of the hostels. We do not feel it’s safe for them (students) to return. We are worried about our careers too.”

University registrar W.C. Singh said the situation was now normal. “Rioters did enter the campus on May 3 but no student was physically assaulted. With the help of the Assam Rifles, the students were taken to camps and from there they left for their homes,” Singh said.

He said he had no information about certificates and theses being burnt by rioters.

Singh said that exams for third-year students at affiliated colleges, originally scheduled to start on May 15, had been deferred.

An NIT Manipur teacher said that outsiders had not entered the campus and added that most of the outstation students — who make up half the NIT’s student population — had left.

IIIT Manipur director Baskar Krishnan said the governments of Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra and Haryana had booked air tickets for their students to return home.