GUWAHATI: Two persons, including a CRPF personnel, were injured in a grenade explosion near the residence of Manipur’s minister of rural development, Yumnam Khemchand, at Yumnam Leikai locality in Imphal West district, police said on Sunday.
While the minister and his family members escaped unscathed, the CRPF personnel guarding the house was injured. The jawan, who hails from West Bengal, sustained injuries on his hand. Two persons, who were on a motorcycle, hurled the grenade, which fell a few metres away from the main gate of the minister’s residence, they added.
No arrest has been made so far and the police are investigating the case. Security was heightened in the area after the incident. Nobody claimed responsibility for the blast. Khemchand, a BJP stalwart, told this newspaper on Sunday that he was at home along with family members when the grenade went off.
Chief Minister N Biren Singh condemned the incident and visited the minister’s residence soon after the blast to take stock of the situation. “The chief minister expressed concern over the incident. He asked me who might have done this. I said I don’t know as I don’t have any enmity with anyone,” the rural development minister said.
Khemchand is a two-time legislator. During the first term (2017-22), he served as the speaker of the Assembly. During ethnic violence in the state, the houses of several lawmakers were torched by irate mobs. Over 170 people lost their lives in the ethnic clashes in the state.
Earlier, a mob had tried to attack Chief Minister Biren Singh’s empty ancestral house on the outskirts of the state capital Imphal as well. The incident happened despite a security clampdown in the valley. However, security forces had successfully pushed back the mob after firing in the air.
The Manipur Police had taken to micro-blogging site X that reports of the Chief Minister’s personal house “being mobbed are false and misleading”. The Singh lives in a separate, well-guarded official home in the centre of Imphal. Several rounds of tear gas shells were fired by the Rapid Action Force and state police personnel to disperse the mob. The authorities had switched off the electricity connection in the entire area to reduce visibility and make it hard for the protesters to proceed.