GUWAHATI: The Working Committee of the Joint Tribes Council-Manipur (WC-JTC) has issued a 48-hour deadline to central and Manipur governments to locate and recover the missing head of a Naga individual from the “Kuki SoO sheltered terrorists” and hand it over to the family.
Ajinbou R was beheaded in an attack in which three other Nagas were also killed, allegedly by the Kuki rebels, in the Kuki-majority Kangpokpi district on Saturday.
Naga organisations identified the three others as Dibambou Ringkangmai, Machungamang Daimai and Ramningpou Gangmei. Five others – two Nagas, two Kukis and a Gorkha community member – were killed in separate attacks in Kamjong and Ukhrul districts on Friday and Saturday.
The WC-JTC declared that the post-mortem examinations of Ajinbou and Dibambou would not be conducted until the decapitated head was recovered and returned to the family for a dignified burial.
“We will not allow the state machinery to mutilate the remains further while the head is treated as a trophy by terrorists,” the WC-JTC said, holding the Manipur and central governments directly responsible.
“The terrorists responsible for this savagery are operating with impunity under the protective umbrella of the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement signed by the Government of India. The state’s continued failure to act makes it complicit in this butchery,” the WC-JTC said in a statement.
The organisation warned that if the two governments failed to comply within 48 hours, it would be forced to take the most stringent measures “at our disposal to secure justice.”
The United Naga Council (UNC), Manipur’s apex Naga organisation, also took strong exception to the incident of beheading.
“This act of decapitation is savagery of the highest order…This is not just murder; it is a war crime that exposes the depraved mindset of the perpetrators. The perpetrators of this heinous crime must be arrested and prosecuted as per the law,” the UNC demanded.
It expressed dismay that Naga villages were allegedly left completely unprotected and at the receiving end of this violence despite the presence of the “highest number of Central and state security personnel in Manipur."
”Meanwhile, the Manipur Naga Youth Organisation has urged Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who has pledged to eradicate insurgency in the Northeast by 2029, to take stock of the serious threat to human existence posed by "Kuki insurgents."
The organisation urged Manipur Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh and the state’s Home Minister Konthoujam Govindas to retract their statements denying the involvement of Kuki National Army-Burma and external forces in the Manipur unrest.
“Both the Centre and the state government must declare the armed conflicts in Manipur as a case of external aggression,” it said.
