A leading Kuki-Zo organisation on Sunday urged the Union home ministry to extend the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to the 13 valley police station areas currently exempted from the act.

The appeal came a day after the BJP-led state government requested the Union ministry to withdraw the Afspa from the six police station areas where it had been re-imposed on Thursday. Of these six, five are in the Meitei-majority valley and one in the tribal-dominated hills.

The Afspa gives the armed forces wide powers to search, detain, arrest and shoot in designated disturbed areas.

Besides requesting that the exempted police stations be brought under the act,the Kangpokpi-based Committee on Tribal Unity (COTU) urged the Centre to withdraw the Afspa from all the hilldistricts, including Leimakhong (Kangpokpi), “which already has the presence of the Army”.

On Thursday’s re-imposition of the Afspa in six police station areas, the COTU said it had been the “first to sound the alarm that Imphal was ‘sabotaged by the armed militias….’”

It urged Union home minister Amit Shah to declare Imphal as disturbed because state armouries were “being constantly looted by civilians and central security have no powers to deter the public who then openly brandished them on streets of Imphal city, where the state and central forces have no powers to deter the public or to recover those looted arms from them”.

The COTU statement made no mention of the state government’s request for the Afspa’s withdrawal from six police station areas.

The Union home ministry had said the Afspa had been re-imposed on these six areas to enable the security forces to conduct coordinated operations and restore order while countering “insurgent groups”.

The re-imposition had followed Monday’s flare-up, particularly in Jiribam district where security forces killed 10 suspected Kuki-Zo militants after they allegedly attacked a police station, a relief camp and a CRPF post. Tensions deepened when it was subsequently found that six civilians from the relief camp were missing.

The state government has cited no reason in its request for the withdrawal of the Afspa from six police station areas, but it is believed to have acted under public pressure. Ordinary citizens and valley organisations have widely criticised the re-imposition, as has the Opposition Congress in the state.

Reports of the deaths of all the missing six camp inmates – five bodies have been found — triggered mob rampage in the valley on Saturday.

To contain the situation, the state government had on Saturday imposed a curfew in five valley districts and suspended Internet services in seven districts, including two in the hills.

On Sunday, the Internet suspension was extendedto the Pherzawl and Jiribam districts.