Manipur Police file case against Meitei Leepun chief Pramot Singh

Imphal: The Manipur Police have registered a criminal case against Meitei Leepun chief Pramot Singh for criminal conspiracy and promoting enmity between groups, among other charges

Police officials in Imphal said that the FIR was registered after leaders of the Kuki Students Organisation (KSO) filed a complaint at the Kangpokpi police station.

KSO President Satminthang Kipgen and General Secretary Thangtinlen Haokip had filed the complained against Singh, who however, has yet to get any notice from the police authority.

The complaint by the KSO leaders was filed on June 13, however an FIR was registered on July 8.

The KSO leaders in their complaint mentioned an interview given by Singh to New Delhi based online media on June 7 where he reportedly said: “Kukis are outsiders who are not indigenous to Manipur.”

Singh, who belongs to Meitei community, has been booked under Sections 120B, 153A, 504, 505, 506 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which, respectively, pertain to criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc, act pre-judicial to maintenance of harmony, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, public mischief, punishment for criminal intimidation with common intention.

Various Meitei and Kuki community organisations have been accused each other of instigating violence in Manipur.

Ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki communities that erupted after a tribal solidarity march on May 3 has claimed more than 150 lives and displaced around 70,000 people of different communities.

The majority of the displaced people took shelter in 350 relief camps in various districts of Manipur while a large number of them took shelter in Mizoram, Assam, Nagaland and Meghalaya.

Meanwhile, influential Kuki organisation Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM) has asked the Central government to expedite separate administration in the form of creation of a new state for the tribals under Article 3 of the Constitution for lasting peace in the region.

The organisation, in a statement, said that as a matter of fact, demographic/geographical separation has come into effect now.

KIM General Secretary Khaikhohauh Gangte said that in the midst of the prevailing perilous situation arising out of the Machiavellian political dispensation designed and ordained by Chief Minister N. Biren Singh through state-sponsored ethnic cleansing pogrom being unleashed on the Kukis in India's Manipur, the KIM reaffirms its collective political demand in the interest of the general public.

“The state capital Imphal has been compartmentalised by the communal Meiteis by hounding off all the Kukis from Imphal valley after burning down their colonies/settlements and churches. The scale and intensity of the institutionalised violence reached catastrophic proportions wherein even our elected representatives are not spared, let alone our bureaucrats and police officers (central and state services),” it alleged.

It claimed that the gruesome genocidal killings of the Kukis abetted by the state machineries and the Meitei militias, who are given carte blanche to annihilate the Kukis evidently shows that the ever widening differences between the Kukis and the Meiteis remain irreconcilable. "In their nefarious attempt to usurp our inalienable land, certain acts like Protected Forest and Reserved Forest have been forcibly imposed in our land-the abode of our forefathers-since time immemorial,” the KIM said.

On Wednesday, the 13 student bodies jointly organised a Solidarity Evening in memory of those killed at Lamka in Churachandpur. In the solidarity evening the special guests during the memorial service were office bearers of the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) of Mizoram along with their team who are on a two-day visit to Lamka.