Web Desk

ISLAMABAD: Indian security forces say they arrested two men linked to a separatist group and seized weapons Tuesday in Manipur, a state bordering Myanmar, locked in <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/curfew-imposed-internet-suspended-in-indias-manipur-after-fresh-violence" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" rel="noopener noreferrer">ethnic civil conflict</a> for nearly three years, drawing repeated warnings from the United Nations of humanitarian collapse. Indian authorities claim that both men are members of the People&#39;s Liberation Army of Manipur, a group advocating for Manipur&#39;s independence from India that New Delhi has designated a terrorist organization, according to The Hindu. Police say they recovered a double-barrel gun, a country-made pistol, 181 rounds of ammunition, two hand grenades, and a detonator in Imphal West district, Manipur Police said in a statement reported by local Indian media. The arrests come as Manipur&#39;s hill-dwelling Kuki-Zo people &mdash; predominantly <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/antichristian-hate-speech-in-india-surges-41-in-2025-report" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" rel="noopener noreferrer">Christian</a> tribal communities &mdash; continue to bear the highest cost of a conflict India has struggled to contain or explain to the outside world. Violence erupted in May 2023 after a court directed authorities to consider granting the majority Meitei &mdash; a valley-dwelling Hindu community with outsized political influence &mdash; expanded indigenous land protections. Kuki-Zo groups feared this would expose their constitutionally protected ancestral hill territories to encroachment, according to UN Special Rapporteurs. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs has noted that many indigenous groups already view Manipur&#39;s 1949 merger into the Indian Union as forced, a grievance that has fueled <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/civil-unrest-under-bjp-manipurs-ethnic-conflict-becomes-indias-warning-sign" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" rel="noopener noreferrer">secessionist movements</a> for decades. What followed the 2023 violence was a virtual partition of the state, with peace-building researchers describing the physical separation of communities as the most complete in the region&#39;s modern history. The humanitarian toll has been severe. Tens of thousands remain in displacement camps with no clear path home, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. By late 2024, approximately 80% of schools across the state were severely affected by curfews and ethnic segregation, impacting over 300,000 students, according to UNICEF. Research published in 2025 found that roughly 1,200 teaching staff had been displaced and that academic records had been destroyed, making educational continuity nearly impossible in conflict zones. Internet shutdowns, among the longest in India&#39;s history, blocked digital learning entirely, disproportionately affecting tribal children, the same research noted. Healthcare has collapsed along ethnic lines. The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition and researchers from The Lancet documented at least eight major attacks on health facilities in 2024 alone, including grenades delivered to hospitals and arson at medical centers. Because major specialist hospitals are concentrated in the Meitei-dominated valley, Kuki-Zo residents in the hills have been completely cut off from critical care. Preventable deaths have risen among patients unable to cross hostile territory for emergency surgery or dialysis, the Coalition documented. Blockades have caused critical shortages of life-saving medicines, routine immunizations, and maternal health supplies across hill districts, the same findings showed. The UN has warned that rhetoric around identifying &quot;outsiders&quot; &mdash; pushed by local groups seeking a National Register of Citizens &mdash; risks fueling further ethnic cleansing. Amnesty International has accused Manipur&#39;s authorities of partisan policing that allowed militias on both sides to arm themselves with weapons looted from state armories. Human Rights Watch and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have repeatedly cited <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/bjp-funds-linked-to-government-contractors-in-northeast-india-report" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" rel="noopener noreferrer">India</a>&#39;s Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which grants security forces broad immunity, as a structural driver of impunity that has deepened mistrust in state institutions over decades. Separately, Manipur&#39;s newly appointed chief minister wrote to India&#39;s civil aviation minister this week requesting subsidized flights on the Imphal-Guwahati route. He said that air connectivity for Manipur&#39;s people was &quot;not just a convenience but an essential requirement,&quot; according to Press Trust of India, India&#39;s national wire service. It is a telling measure of how isolated the state remains from the rest of the country.

An ambulance rides past a security vehicle positioned in the middle of a road, during a curfew in Imphal on June 9, 2025. Riven by ethnic tensions, Manipur in India's northeast imposed an internet shutdown and curfew after protesters clashed with security

India

The arrests come as Manipur's hill-dwelling Kuki-Zo people — predominantly Christian tribal communities — continue to bear the heaviest cost of a conflict India has struggled to contain or explain to the outside world.

In India's smoldering ethnic war, fresh arrests deepen Manipur's wounds

ISLAMABAD: A man kneels in the dirt, hands clasped, pleading for his life. Gunshots crack. His body slumps forward. The video, filmed in India&#39;s remote northeastern state of Manipur, would be viewed by millions within hours. The graphic clip has become the latest flashpoint in an <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/civil-unrest-under-bjp-manipurs-ethnic-conflict-becomes-indias-warning-sign" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">ethnic&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/civil-unrest-under-bjp-manipurs-ethnic-conflict-becomes-indias-warning-sign" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">conflict</a>&nbsp;that has killed at least 260 people and displaced 60,000 since May 2023. It is a crisis that has left the state effectively partitioned along ethnic lines, yet remains largely unknown beyond India&#39;s borders. <div class="fr-embed"><div></div></div> The victim, identified by the Press Trust of India as Mayanglambam Rishikanta Singh, was a member of the Meitei community. His wife belongs to the Kuki ethnic minority.&nbsp; According to Indian media reports, four masked men abducted Singh and his wife from their home in the Tuibong area on Jan. 8, 2026. His wife was released. Singh was not. Vijatia Singh, the deputy editor of The Hindu, one of India&#39;s leading newspapers, reported that the video was filmed and &quot;published on WhatsApp within an hour&quot; of the killing. <div class="fr-embed"><div></div></div> Soon, the town of Kakching erupted in protests. Demonstrators burned tires on roads and shut down markets, according to journalists covering the unrest. The Press Trust of India attributed the killing to &quot;suspected Kuki militants,&quot; alleging the gunmen belonged to the United Kuki National Army, a group that has not signed a ceasefire agreement with Indian authorities. <div class="fr-embed"><div class="fr-embed"><div></div></div></div> But in Manipur, a state where ethnic identity determines which roads you can travel and which neighborhoods you can enter, the question of who killed Singh has become inseparable from a larger, more intractable question: How did India allow an entire state to collapse into segregation? A state divided by invisible lines Manipur, a lush, mountainous state bordering Myanmar, is now effectively two separate territories. The Imphal Valley, a flat basin comprising just 8% of the state&#39;s land, is home to the Meitei, a predominantly Hindu ethnic group that makes up roughly 44% of Manipur&#39;s 3 million people, according to India&#39;s 2011 census. Surrounding the valley are hills controlled by the Kuki-Zo, a collective term for more than 20 tribes, most of them <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/opposition-slams-indias-ruling-bjp-after-attack-on-christian-pastor" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">Christian</a>, who hold official &quot;Scheduled Tribe&quot; status under India&#39;s Constitution. That designation grants them land protections and government job quotas that the Meitei do not have. Between the two communities lies what locals call a &quot;buffer zone,&quot; though authorities prefer terms like &quot;sensitive areas&quot; or &quot;vulnerable stretches.&quot; It is a no man&#39;s land patrolled by federal paramilitary forces where neither Meitei nor Kuki can pass without risking their lives. The violence that created this division began on May 3, 2023, after a Manipur High Court order directed the state government to consider granting Scheduled Tribe status to the Meitei. For the Kuki, the ruling represented an existential threat. Scheduled Tribe protections, established decades ago to shield indigenous communities from land grabs, would suddenly extend to the state&#39;s dominant ethnic group. &quot;This is what happens when decision-makers are fed a false sense of normalcy,&quot; said an analysis by Vantage Monitor, an open-source intelligence firm that tracks conflicts from an &lsquo;Indian lens&rsquo;. &quot;On paper, things may look calm. On the ground, fear, armed groups, and deep mistrust still exist.&quot; <div class="fr-embed"><div></div></div>Conflict with roots in land and identity The tensions in Manipur did not begin in 2023. For years, the state government, led until early 2025 by Chief Minister N Biren Singh, pursued&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/bjp-funds-linked-to-government-contractors-in-northeast-india-report" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">policies</a>&nbsp;that many Kuki leaders described as discriminatory. Authorities conducted eviction drives in hill districts, clearing villages they claimed were encroaching on protected forests. Singh&#39;s government publicly referred to some Kuki groups as &quot;illegal immigrants&quot; and &quot;narco-terrorists,&quot; according to Human Rights Watch. The Meitei, meanwhile, argued they were being squeezed. Community leaders pointed to census data showing their share of Manipur&#39;s population had dropped from 59% in 1951 to 44% in 2011. Confined to the valley, they could not legally buy land in the hills. But hill tribes, they said, faced no such restrictions in purchasing valley property. <div class="fr-embed"><div></div></div> When violence erupted, both sides were armed. Over 6,000 weapons and 600,000 rounds of ammunition were looted from state armories in the conflict&#39;s early days, according to official figures cited by Amnesty International. Vigilante groups emerged. The Meitei formed militias with names like Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun. The Kuki relied on a patchwork of militant organizations, some with histories stretching back to separatist insurgencies of the 1990s. The Indian Supreme Court later described the situation as an &quot;absolute breakdown of law and order.&quot; It noted that the police appeared &quot;inept&quot; and, in some cases, &quot;colluded with the perpetrators.&quot; International alarm over government complicity The conflict drew international condemnation after a video surfaced in July 2023 showing two Kuki women being paraded naked by a Meitei mob before being gang-raped. United Nations experts said the footage provided evidence of &quot;systematic sexual violence&quot; and stated that Indian authorities were potentially aiding &quot;the incitement of racial and religious hatred.&quot; Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both documented what they describe as a &quot;pro-Meitei bias&quot; in the state government&#39;s response. According to these organizations, authorities provided &quot;political patronage&quot; to Meitei vigilante groups and failed to prosecute mob leaders. The Indian government imposed one of the world&#39;s longest internet shutdowns in response to the crisis, cutting access for over 200 days in 2023. The blackout, which continued intermittently through 2025, made it difficult for journalists and aid workers to document abuses or coordinate relief efforts, according to the United Nations. In relief camps housing displaced Kuki families, conditions have been described by Amnesty International as &quot;inhumane,&quot; with severe shortages of clean water, sanitation and medical care. As of May 2025, India&#39;s Union Home Ministry had allocated approximately $256,000 for relief efforts. An amount aid workers told the organization was &quot;falling far too short of needs.&quot; Authorities also targeted critics. Journalists, activists and fact-finding teams, including members of the Editors Guild of India, faced criminal charges such as sedition and defamation after publishing reports critical of the government&#39;s handling of the violence, according to Human Rights Watch. Division remains On Feb. 9, 2025, Chief Minister Singh resigned after audio recordings surfaced that allegedly linked him to the instigation of ethnic violence. Four days later, the Indian government imposed President&#39;s Rule, suspended the state legislature and placed governance under a federally appointed governor. The move was meant to ensure neutral administration. Yet even under federal control, the state remains split. Kuki political leaders, represented by the Kuki-Zo Council, continue to demand what they call a &quot;separate administration&quot; &mdash; in effect, a new territory carved from Manipur where they would govern themselves. On Jan. 13, 2026, the council and 10 elected Kuki lawmakers formally resolved to boycott any future Manipur government unless New Delhi provides a &quot;written, time-bound commitment&quot; to their autonomy demands, according to official council resolutions. Approximately 40,000 to 60,000 Kuki remain in displacement camps as of late 2025, according to academic studies tracking the crisis. Researchers have documented what they describe as a &quot;mental health emergency&quot; in these camps, with widespread cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and suicides among elderly residents. Neither community can travel freely. Meitei cannot access the hills. Kuki cannot enter Imphal, the state capital, where hospitals, universities and government offices are located. The buffer zone remains. &quot;Human life is indispensable,&quot; Vantage Monitor wrote in its analysis of Singh&#39;s killing. &quot;Once lost, no statement, inquiry, or reassurance can bring it back. If ground reality is misread today, the long-term consequences, politically, socially, and strategically, will be far more damaging tomorrow. This is not just a law-and-order failure. It is a warning signal.&quot; For now, that warning remains unheeded. The video of Singh&#39;s execution continues to spread on encrypted messaging apps, watched by millions who still cannot answer a simpler question: In a democracy of 1.4 billion, how does an entire state descend into ethnic partition while the world looks away?

Ethnic violence has effectively partitioned India's Manipur state into heavily armed, segregated zones, killing at least 260 and displacing 60,000 since May 2023. Yet the crisis remains largely unknown internationally.

Articles tagged with "Kuki Meitei conflict"

In India's smoldering ethnic war, fresh arrests deepen Manipur's wounds

Execution video exposes how Manipur became India's invisible conflict zone