One of the worst cycles of the Meitei-Kuki ethnic violence in Manipur since May 2023 began on November 7 in Jiribam district, 220 km from the state capital Imphal, on the interstate border with Assam. At least 19 people have died, including 10 Kuki men who the police have called “militants”, in less than two weeks. The Kuki tribes claim the 10 men were “village volunteers”.

This multi-ethnic district, where a National Highway akin to a lifeline for Manipur passes through to reach Assam (and hence the rest of the country), had been violence-free for over a year until June, when the body of a Kuki teen was found in a river.

Kuki civil society organisations had alleged a Meitei armed group killed the teen and dumped him into the river. Then the body of a Meitei man was found, allegedly killed by a Kuki armed group in a retaliatory strike.

In both the cases and the many thereafter that shattered whatever semblance of peace Jiribam had, the police have not conclusively found the accused. All that remained were videos on social media, voice messages on WhatsApp groups, photos, screenshots, etc that claimed they were what really happened among the many ‘truths’ competing for takers. While some of these viral content can be cross-checked to a high level of accuracy, most are simply unverifiable.

Real people died, but narratives went on gliding smoothly through the airwaves.

November 7 Attack On Hmar Village

The macabre murders of six members of a Meitei family – including an infant, a two-year-old boy, and an eight-year-old girl – by suspected Kuki militants in Jiribam appeared to be the closing of the cycle of violence that began on November 7, when a woman from the Hmar tribe, mother of three little children and school teacher, was allegedly raped, shot in the leg, killed and set on fire by suspected Meitei militants in Jiribam’s Zairawn village.

The suspected Meitei militants set fire to several structures, including the school teacher’s house, which stood at the end of a row of houses in Zairawn village, eyewitnesses who claimed they ran to a nearby treeline and saw the burning houses told NDTV. Her house was the last to be attacked, they said.

The autopsy report said the school teacher’s body was burned 99 per cent. It noted horrific injuries, including broken bones and a separated skull. Samples to check for sex assault could not be taken as “the body parts were completely charred and not recognisable”, according to the report. The rape allegation was made by her husband in a first information report (FIR).

NDTV is not disclosing her name owing to the rape allegation, as a Supreme Court order bans revealing the identity of a rape victim or a survivor, so do Section 72 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) and other Kuki civil society groups have alleged the Meitei armed group Arambai Tenggol (AT) was involved in the November 7 night attack.

The AT calls itself a “volunteer” group, and claims to have taken up arms to defend the Meitei community due to alleged inaction by security forces in Meitei villages near Kuki-dominant foothills. The Kuki tribes also have armed “village volunteers” who the Meiteis accuse of working with well-trained and heavily armed Kuki militants.

Houses Set On Fire

The 31-year-old teacher taught at Jiribam’s Hermon Dew English Junior High School, 400 metres from a heap of burnt wood, bent metal and ashes, or what is left of a place that she once called home when she was alive.

A college student from the town, who studied in the school where she taught, told NDTV his own family also barely escaped death by “mere seconds, running barefoot to the adjoining forests under raining bullets.”

The college student and others from Zairawn village, who requested anonymity for safety and privacy reasons, said they did not expect an attack as firing had stopped in the area for nearly a month.

“… Most Zairawn villagers (including women and children) who had taken refuge in (Assam’s) Cachar returned to the village recently with the assurances of security forces like CRPF, who are stationed in the village. The children wanted to return to the classroom as their studies had been hugely affected due to escalation in violence in the neighbouring areas,” the college student, who is also a relative of the school teacher’s husband, told NDTV.

“Unbeknownst to their fate, several women and children including my own family were sleeping peacefully at their homes, a few hundred metres away from Mongbung Meitei Leikai. The sound of gunfire was first heard at 9 pm; it came from the Mongbung side. Many villagers believed that no armed intruder would enter the village, as in the last few months no one left their homes despite hearing the sound of gunfire,” the college student alleged, adding within minutes at least a hundred Meitei men, some armed with assault rifles and others carrying melee weapons, reached the gate of Zairawn village.

“They started shooting at homes before looting. If not for the difference of a mere few seconds, that night could have turned into a massacre of my village. My family barely escaped death, ran to the adjoining forests under raining bullets. Just like my own family, she (the school teacher) and her family were still staying in their house during the attack, believing that the armed intruders wouldn’t enter the village.

“Their (the school teacher) house was closer to the middle of the village and so they did not intend to leave. They could not have known what awaited them. But within a few minutes the armed intruders entered the village. Due to no opposition, they quickly reached the front of the house and went inside, shooting,” the college student told NDTV.

‘Couple Made Hard Decision’

Other eyewitnesses said the couple and their children ran out of the house, but went right back in due to heavy gunfire outside. It was during this time she was shot in the leg, they said, adding her husband carried her till their garden, but had to save the children, so the couple likely made a hard decision while their house began burning.

They shared visuals of the attack, some of which appeared to have been recorded by the suspected Meitei militants themselves during the attack. They are heard shouting in Meeteilon, the language of the Meitei people. Other videos show Hmar villagers hiding behind a treeline in the dark. The night time temperature in Jiribam is about 18 degree Celsius in this season. NDTV could not independently verify the visuals.

“As seen in the video, some miscreants, likely Meitei locals from nearby Mongbung who grew up with Zairawn villagers, asked their fellow miscreants not to kill anyone, while others shouted ‘I’ll kill them’,” the student told NDTV. “After that we don’t really know what happened other than what the autopsy reports say,” the student said, adding his house was also set on fire.

Some Hmar villagers have alleged the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) stationed in Zairawn did not intervene on November 7 night.

They alleged the attackers set fire to 19 houses, looted a huge amount of cash; stole mobile phones, cooking gas cylinders, six two-wheelers, and killed some village dogs.

“It was a hugely traumatic incident for us Zairawn villagers. We never thought even in our worst nightmare anything like this would happen,” the college student said.

A day after the Zairawn attack, a woman from the Meitei community was shot dead allegedly by suspected Kuki militants while working in a paddy field in the valley district Bishnupur. While Meitei civil society groups alleged the firing came from a nearby hill, the Kuki tribes have denied the shooting, citing the long distance from the nearest hill to the paddy field where the woman was hit. Kuki groups have alleged Meitei insurgents tried to shoot at central forces for not letting them cross the sensitive area (or “buffer zone”), but missed and hit the farmer.

On Monday, 10 suspected Kuki militants were shot dead by the CRPF in Jiribam’s Borobekra. The same day, six members of a family from the Meitei community were taken hostage by suspected Kuki militants. They allegedly shot dead two Meitei senior citizens before leaving by boat via Barak River. Kuki civil society organisations have demanded an investigation into the Monday encounter. Three partially decomposed bodies were found floating in a river on Friday. More bodies were found in the river on Saturday and Sunday. They turned out to be the bodies of the six hostages. The Kuki tribes alleged Meitei miscreants set fire to at least five churches on Saturday night in Jiribam.

All these were part of the cycle of violence that spiked on November 7 in Jiribam, beginning with the killing of the school teacher – despite local Meitei and Hmar representatives agreeing to maintain peace in meetings moderated by the security forces.

The school teacher from the Hmar tribe is survived by her husband, a three-year-old son, and two daughters, who are seven and nine years old.

There is a photo of a gravestone in Jiribam, taken on a November evening when the winter sunlight is a soft yellow.

The three children were standing around the gravestone, on which the name of their mother was etched with an epitaph in what appeared to be the Hmar dialect. The boy, the youngest among them, was standing in the middle with both hands pressed to the gravestone. His sisters flanked him. Their father stood in the middle, behind all of them, and looked halfway down somewhere in the distance, a visibly broken man.

The shadow of a tree falls on him.