After 3 Meiteis killed, town now in crosshairs of Manipur conflict

In small town Kwakta, though located in the Meitei-dominated Bishnupur district, almost 85 per cent of its estimated 13,500 voters are Muslim Meitei Pangals; around 1,500 are Meiteis; and there are just around 15 Kuki-Zomi houses in Ward 8 of the Kwakta municipal council area.

While the Muslim Meitei Pangals are not engaged in the conflict between the warring Meitei and Kuki-Zomi communities, Kwakta town itself – given its geography – has been at the crosshairs of the conflict for the past three months. Travelling through the arterial Tidim Road, between Kwakta and the Bishnupur-Churachandpur border areas of Kangvai and Torbung, lie just two Meitei dominated areas: Ward 9 Meitei Leikai and Phoubakchang.

On Saturday, death reached Kwakta’s doorstep. In the early hours of Saturday, three Meitei men, including a father and son, were found killed in their homes in the Meitei Pangal-dominated Kwakta Ward 8. Sleeping in his home – just a few steps away from the house in which Yumnam Jiten Meitei was killed, 30-year-old Zalam Khan said he had not realised what was happening.

“We have been hearing the sound of firing for the last three months. We were sleeping at home, and didn’t think there was something different happening. We found out (about the killings) around 4 am when the police commandos came,” he said.

On Sunday, the two homes in which the three people had been killed were locked. Apart from that, Zalam Khan’s home and other neighbouring Meitei Pangal homes had been locked too, with the families moving into their relatives’ homes or a new relief camp set up by the community in Sevla village in the Kwakta gram panchayat area.

Apart from the deaths, one 28-year-old Meitei Pangal was injured in the intense firing that continued through the day on Saturday. This took the total number of people from the community in Kwakta injured to 12 since the conflict began. While most of these were injuries by stray bullets in firing, three people had been injured in a suspected IED blast on a bridge Kwakta on June 21, in a case which has since been transferred to the National Investigation Agency.

One of them was 15-year-old Albaz Khan who was injured when an SUV parked on a bridge exploded when he was travelling back home from Imphal. He is bedridden now, unable to see with his left eye, and unable to use his left arm and leg. “We had really not thought that something like this could happen to our family. We are not a part of this conflict, so we hadn’t thought that we would be harmed,” said his uncle Mohammad Abdul Hakim.

After the deaths on Saturday, the tensions in the area showed up in other ways as well. A large number of Meitei people mobilised in the area. Some Kuki homes were destroyed, and barely 100 metres away from where father and son Yumnam Pishak Meitei and Yumnam Premkumar Meitei were killed Saturday, a Kuki home and church had been torn down. Since Kwakta is located in Bishnupur district, the few Kuki-Zomi families living in the area had left it in the early days of the conflict. On the other hand, two relief centres for Meitei families displaced from nearby areas had been set up in Kwakta, including one set up by an individual Yangkhubam Shabir Ahmed in his family’s home where around 70 people are currently living.

Some Muslim Meitei Pangal locals The Indian Express spoke to said members of the Meitei community were questioning their role in the killings of Saturday, questioning how the attackers – suspected to be from the Kuki-Zomi community – could have identified the homes of Meiteis without help.

A Pangal dominated village Leithen, located close to Kwakta, had been emptied a few days back and has now become a base for armed Meitei civilians. That, locals say, is being viewed with suspicion by the Kuki-Zomi community. “From May 3 till today, we have had no rest. We have been trying to look out for the community, trying to get by, but both sides suspect from time to time we are helping the other. We’re caught in the middle,” said Mohammad Jiyauddin, Working President of the Meitei Pangal Intellectual Forum in Kwakta.