The two brothers, 12 and 14 years old, hid in fields during the attack by “Kuki militants”
Imphal/New Delhi:
Two minor siblings who hid in fields during an attack by “Kuki militants” in Manipur’s Jiribam district on November 11 have given details of what they saw that day.
The elder of the two said he managed to run from “armed Kukis” before they took away his family at gunpoint.
His younger brother said he was in another house with an uncle and an aunt; they too hid in a field.
Their mother, Telem Thoibi Devi, 31, and eight-year-old sister were among six members of their family who were kidnapped and killed by suspects identified as “Kuki militants” by the state government. The other four were their grandmother, mother’s sister, her infant baby, and three-year-old son.
NDTV is not disclosing their identities since they are minors and also eyewitnesses to a case which is now being handled by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
“I was hiding in a field. I couldn’t get up as I was scared of getting shot,” the 12-year-old survivor said.
“I was with an uncle in another house, some four houses away (from where his family members were). When I got out to see, the Kukis came shouting expletives. The CRPF was there, but all of them had gone for lunch. Only one (soldier) was behind,” said the 12-year-old son of Thoibi Devi, whose decomposed body with four bullet wounds in the chest was found floating in a river in Jiribam.
The autopsy report of Thoiboi Devi also said both eyes were dislodged from the sockets; her scalp was lacerated at many places, the skull bone was broken and pushed in, and her head was crushed.
The 12-year-old boy said there were women among the attackers in Jiribam’s Borobekra village.
“They came in two packed vehicles, some came walking. They were diesel autorickshaw, the big ones. They surrounded (us) from all four sides. I didn’t see how many women were there, but I saw their faces. I didn’t see them set houses on fire. I saw smoke rising from there while hiding in the field with my uncle and aunt,” he said. “My brother was with my mother. He managed to run.”
The eldest among the three siblings, who is 14, also said the attackers came in autorickshaws. He was with his mother, sister and the other family members.
“They were armed, they jumped out and started shooting at the house. Two of them came and kicked the door. They told us to get out, which we did. A total of four were outside. One of them held my arm and hit my face with the butt of the gun. There was a huge swelling here,” he said, and touched his face to show the affected area.
“I managed to run. They fired a few rounds. They (family) were taken away at gunpoint. I hid in a nearby field. I saw a Casper (armoured vehicle) pursuing them towards the bazaar, towards the ghat, where there are steps (on the banks of the Barak River),” he said.
“It was a CRPF Casper, the small, white one, which looks like a Scorpio. It was damaged in the gunfight. We heard the gunshots,” he said.
Civilians in Manipur often call any large armoured SUV or truck “Casper”, after the Casspir mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicle used in counter-insurgency operations.
The police in Jiribam had released a photo of a white SUV with numerous bullet holes, which they claimed were fired by militants.
The eyewitness accounts of the two young boys appear to corroborate with what other eyewitnesses in Jiribam’s Borobekra had reported.
Laishram Herojit, whose three family members including wife, infant and three-year-old son were killed, told NDTV on November 13 that he got a call from his wife when shooting and arson broke out. The call got disconnected and when he dialled her back, he found the phone was switched off.
“She was crying on the phone. She said they were surrounded by a lot of armed people. The call got disconnected, after which I called her back, but the mobile was switched off. My mother-in-law’s phone was also switched off. About an hour later – and we had been searching for a while – a Bengali friend of my wife told us she saw them being taken away in a boat,” Mr Herojit told NDTV.
The 10-month-old infant was shot in the knee, stabbed in the chest, and hit with a blunt object on the jaw, according to the postmortem report shared by the family. Both eyeballs were missing, and maggots were present in the infant’s body which was found in an advanced stage of putrefaction, the autopsy report said. There were bruises all over the face and a sharp cut in the abdomen. The “chop wound” on the infant’s chest fractured the ribs, the autopsy report said.
The Kuki militants had split up into two groups, one that took the family of six, and the other that moved towards the CRPF camp, police sources have said. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp and the police station in Jiribam’s Borobekra are less than 1 km from the Barak River (see map above).
The yellow line is the distance between the river and the CRPF camp (approximately 600 metres), while the white line is the distance between a small settlement and the police station (approximately 350 metres). The small settlement is on the upper tip of the white arrow. This is where the houses were set on fire by the Kuki militants after attacking the police station, according to police sources.
The CRPF engaged them in the open stretch between the larger settlement towards the direction of the river and the camp, which is next to the small settlement that was set on fire, sources had said.
Civil society groups and leaders of the Kuki tribes have claimed the 10 men were “village volunteers”.
The police have, however, called them “militants” and showed assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher as recovered from them, and the bullet-ridden SUV.
Political leaders across party lines have condemned the killing of women and children in Manipur. Most have said the latest incident was a terror attack considering it was not a skirmish between two communities in a riot-like situation, but a calculated, premeditated kidnapping operation with an intention to kill them.
The latest round of violence in Jiribam began on November 7 when suspected Meitei militants attacked a village of the Hmar tribe. A woman from the Hmar tribe was killed in the attack. Her husband in a police case alleged she was shot in the leg, raped and then set on fire by the suspected Meitei militants. Civil society groups of the Kuki tribes have accused the Manipur government of keeping silent on that attack.
The Manipur cabinet in a statement on November 16 had said “Kuki miscreants” burnt several houses and attacked Borobekra police station in Jiribam district on October 19. This attack and not the November 7 attack led to a fresh cycle of violence, sources have said.
There are many villages of the Kuki tribes in the hills surrounding the Meitei-dominated valley. The clashes between the Meitei community and the nearly two dozen tribes known as Kukis – a term given by the British in colonial times – who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, has killed over 220 people and internally displaced nearly 50,000.
The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.
