Flashback to a killing in Imphal

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This is the killing that suspended Manipur Police head constable Thounojam Herojit Singh, 35, was owning up to on Tuesday when he admitted that he had shot dead an unarmed man six years earlier.

Sanjit Meitei, 22, was killed on July 23, 2009. He was a suspected member of the banned People’s Liberation Army.

According to the official version of the Manipur Police, the commandos had been carrying out a frisking operation at the Thangal-Paona bazar, Imphal’s most congested business centre. They say a young man, about to be frisked, whipped out a small arm and fired at the police and fled. It was this shot, say the police, that killed Rabina, a pregnant woman who was then buying bananas. The police say they chased the youth, who fired a second time, and they fired back. The young man supposedly ran into Maimu Pharmacy, where more shots were allegedly exchanged until the youth was killed. The police claim they also recovered a 9mm pistol from the body.

July 23, 2009. Moments later Sanjit Meitei’s body is taken out of a pharmacy and placed alongside a woman’s. (Source: © tehelka.com)

Five civilians were injured that day, three of them from bullets. And the injuries of one civilian, Golmei Mangal, has been linked to a bullet from the AK-47 issued to rifleman Khaiminthang Baite.

Herojit Singh, 29 then, had already acquired a reputation as an expert encounter cop. It was he who had ordered the frisking, he said. “We were chasing extortionists after a complaint from a store owner saying a group of three or four young men had come to take money,” Herojit said.

The police rounded up some men and rifleman Ngangom Toyaima Singh identified Sanjit Meitei as a former PLA recruit. Herojit said they took him to the pharmacy and he informed then additional SP, Imphal West, A K Jhalajit. Herojit alleged it was Jhalajit who gave him the order to “finish off” Meitei.

Jhalajit, now SP, Imphal West, responded Wednesday with a statement that read: “I deny the allegations levelled against me by Th Herojit Singh, head constable of Manipur police… as motivated, concocted and baseless. It may be mentioned that the case was investigated thoroughly by the premier investigation agency CBI and trial of the case is now going on in the court of the sessions judge, Imphal West. Thus the matter being sub judice, I will not make further statement.”

Herojit said that he had gone back into the pharmacy alone, while his colleagues had kept guard, and shot the youth six times. Meitei was not armed and was only carrying a mobile, Herojit admitted.

Herojit’s admission comes over five years after the CBI in 2010 filed a chargesheet, which alludes to a number of discrepancies in the police’s account. In the chargesheet, Herojit is accused number 3 out of nine.

The victim

Sanjit Meitei’s postmortem found six entry and four exit wounds and concluded he died of lacerations in the liver and lungs resulting from firearm injuries in the abdomen and chest. One bullet injury was sustained while standing, and all the rest while in a lying position, the report said.

According to the family, that day Meitei had gone to visit his uncle at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute for Medical Sciences. Carrying lunch for his uncle, he rode a scooter with a friend. At 9.30 am, he went out of the hospital to buy medicines.

“He pumped six bullets into my child. He has implicated the SP and the superiors,” Sanjit’s mother Chungkham Taratombi Devi said of Herojit on Wednesday. “The SP, the former DGP and the CM should stand trial and be handed out punishment according to the law of the land. My son had gone to get medicines for his ailing uncle that day. While his uncle is still alive, my son never came home,” she said.

Sanjit hailed from Tinsit Road in Imphal East. At the age of 13 in 1999, he dropped out of school — he was in class VIII — to join the People’s Liberation Army. He had been arrested twice by Manipur Commandos and detained for a year under the NSA. He was released in early 2007.

After his death, his mother had said that since his release, he had not kept in touch with the PLA or any other banned outfit.

The commando

When The Indian Express met him in Imphal, Herojit no longer had the swagger of a Manipur commando, Manipur police’s elite force that has earned notoriety for alleged fake encounters. His hands shook and he repeatedly brushed his forehead.

“I thought what I was doing was in the service of the nation,” he said. “My mother used to work in the government, so they would come and ask for extortion money, sometimes ridiculous amounts like Rs 20 lakh. I asked them to leave us alone and they set one condition, that I should join them. When my parents came to know, they pleaded with the group to leave me be. They agreed but beat me up. Since that day I knew I wanted to join the police. I joined commando training in 2001 and thought, all that is finally going to be over.”

Though suspended, he continues to live in the commando barracks in Imphal West with his wife and two sons, 11 and 1. He has not drawn his salary for several years. He hails from a village called Lamdeng Awang Leikai, about 5 km outside of Imphal.

“I have never told the CBI this in any of my testimonies. At the time, I didn’t tell anyone because I felt I would be killed,” Herojit told The Indian Express.

“Now I no longer have any faith in the system and fear for my life. Last month when I was coming back from a court hearing, I was waylaid by a group of police commandos who took me to my own police station, Imphal West, and kept me there for five or six hours. They kept asking me what I had been doing,” he said. “I am no longer safe. I am scared for my life.”