The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Manipur government to act against illegal arms irrespective of the affiliations of those stocking or using them and sought a status report on its August 7 direction to take stock of the arms looted or missing and to formulate a plan for recovering them. Presiding over a three-judge bench that took up petitions filed in the wake of the ethnic clashes that broke out in the state, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud told counsel appearing for the various tribes who accused each other of looting weapons and using them that the court was “not concerned with who looted”. “We are looking at it as we have said repeatedly that we are not concerned with the source of the wrongdoing. We are concerned with the fact that there has to be accountability for wrongdoing. We are not concerned with the source of human suffering. Irrespective of the source of the human suffering, everybody has to be dealt with on a uniform basis,” CJI Chandrachud said. “Even for disarmament, we are not concerned with if there are illegal arms on one side or the other. We are dealing with this objectively. The state has to take action irrespective of the source where the illegal arms are situated”, the CJI said, adding that the “investigation of crime, dealing with various aspects of human suffering, recovery of arms providing compensation, these have to take place across the board irrespective of who the person genuinely in need is”. The bench also comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said in its order, “All the learned counsel appearing.have fairly stated that it would be appropriate if a status report is placed before this court for its perusal by the state of Manipur” in respect of the August 7 direction “which the Solicitor General has agreed to do. Having regard to the sensitivity of the issue, it has been agreed that presently the status report shall be made available only for the perusal of this court”. The court in its August 7 judgment had directed the state to “take stock of the number of arms missing or looted from the armouries of the state and of these, the number of arms which have been recovered. Formulate and implement a plan to recover any missing arms”. On Wednesday, senior advocate Sanjay Hegde told the bench that while the August 7 order only refers to arms in the control of the state, “the real problem is.there were a lot of arms in militant camps which were jointly patrolled by the state and those militants. Now what has happened is the militants have entered those camps, taken away the arms, and because it does not fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the state, those arms are being paraded on Independence Day and that is what is adding to the violence”. The court clarified it meant arms not just from the state armouries but from all sources.
