Imphal/New Delhi:
An armoured vehicle of the central security forces came under heavy attacks by protesters from the Kuki tribes in Manipur on the first day of the Centre’s order to ensure free movement of people in the crisis-hit state, which is under the President’s rule.
A video taken from inside the vehicle, which has gone viral now, showed stones and other projectiles thrown by protesters hitting the windshield of the armoured vehicle, while the jawans inside warn the protesters to fall back or face action.
Amid a barrage of projectiles that hit all over the mine-resistant vehicle and caused loud metallic cracks to reverberate inside the cabin, the jawans managed to push through the road unharmed, security sources said.
The nearly two-minute video showed the armoured vehicle ploughed through an empty passenger bus and a van kept by the protesters to block the road, ran over a mound of stones that would have stopped a smaller vehicle, and rammed three separate lines of metal barrels kept one after another amid burning tyres.
More security personnel were waiting on the other side of the blockade when the vehicle finally arrived. No one was injured during the crossing, sources said.
A similar security vehicle running as an escort came from the opposite direction, ready to enter the zone that the armoured vehicle had just passed.
Civilian buses escorted by the security forces resumed trips across districts in Manipur on March 8 amid protests by the Kuki tribes, who want no free movement until their demand for a separate administration carved out of the state is met.
A protester died of bullet injuries in Kangpokpi district. Sixteen protesters and 27 security personnel were injured, and two vehicles of the security forces were set on fire, the police said.
Some elements among the protesters shot at the security forces, after which the jawans retaliated, the police said.
“The security forces showed tremendous restraint while trying to control the unruly and violent mob and used minimum force to control and counter the anti-social elements, including the firing by armed miscreants from among the protesters,” the police said in a statement on March 8.
Buses that went to southern Manipur’s Churachandpur reached without any incident and faced no road blockade, officials said. The buses crossed the Meitei-dominant Bishnupur and reached Churachandpur’s Kangvai, some 55 km from Imphal, with essentials like fuel and cooking gas.
The Centre had announced there should be no road blockades anywhere from March 8 in Manipur.
The valley-dominant Meitei community and over a dozen distinct tribes collectively known as Kuki, who are dominant in some hill areas of Manipur, have been fighting since May 2023 over a range of issues such as land rights and political representation. Over 250 have died in the violence and nearly 50,000 have been internally displaced.
Kuki leaders, nearly two dozen militant groups that have signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement, and their frontal civil organisations have demanded the Centre give them a separate administration before allowing communities to move freely across Manipur.
Meitei organisations have questioned why thousands of internally displaced people living in relief camps are threatened by the Kuki tribes from returning home to rebuild their lives, and why people cannot travel safely on national highways, when talks can go on simultaneously.
