Manipur: The '900 Kuki Militants' Mystery and Withdrawn 'Intelligence'

It created fodder online and for mainstream media to build a hateful narrative against the Kuki-Zomi community.

File photo of Manipur CM Biren Singh. 

(Photo: PTI)

The ethnic conflict that began in the state of Manipur on 3 May 2023 has festered on and grown into a tinderbox for reasons that are complex, and continues to be highly speculative. As time has passed, the verity of state complicity through commission and omission in perpetuating targeted violence against the Kuki-Zomi tribals has slowly appeared on the surface.

Even so, Manipur has confounded constitutional courts, public intellectuals, political analysts, and the general populace even within as well as outside Manipur. The corollary has been the birth (or revival) of conflict and peace entrepreneurs, parachuted northeast experts, and the resuscitation of old security hawks on prime-time television news. Most of them have opined on, discussed, and collectively watched unfathomable events unfold in Manipur that are non-pareil in the life of our 77-year-old republic but also in sovereign, mature democratic nation-states guided by a written constitution and the rule of law anywhere else in the world.

To recollect and list a few — unimaginable horrors of the most egregious nature were inflicted by armed mobs aided and abetted by state uniformed personnel upon civilian non-combatants especially, tribal women. Heated exchanges between the Assam Rifles and the Manipur Police led to guns being aimed at each other.

The Indian Army publicly admitted that they were forced by a mob (which reportedly had a BJP legislator as part of the mob) in June 2023 to release 12 Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup cadres, a proscribed militant organisation, along with Lt Col Moirangthem Tamba, the mastermind of the ambush on a 6 Dogra patrolling party in 2015, which killed 18 soldiers. The Indian Constitution was ruthlessly subverted at Kangla Fort in Imphal, where 39 Meitei lawmakers were administered an ethno-political oath and a six-point charter of demands by the Arambai Tenggol, a self-styled Meitei militia, reportedly flouted by “Maharaja” Leishamba Sanajaoba, the titular king of Manipur and a Rajya Sabha member.

In what can be termed as the latest self-revelation of the dangerous seizure of a democratically elected state government by ethnic majoritarian interests, the Secretary to the Chief Minister, in an unofficial note classified as ‘immediate’ on 16 September gave highly specific intelligence to the Director General of Police and Security Adviser to the Government of Manipur, that over “900 Kuki militants [grouped in units of 30 each], newly trained in drone-based bombs, projectiles/missiles and jungle warfare have entered Manipur from Myanmar…and are expected to launch multiple coordinated attacks on Meitei villages around 28 September 2024”.

Of course, this was not the first time that the Secretary to the Chief Minister had sent intelligence inputs to the security establishment. In January 2024, he had written similar note(s) to the security officials warning of an impending attack by "200 armed Kuki-Zo militants" who had "moved from Churachandpur and reached Phaitol village, Old and New Kaiphundai area of Tamenglong district bordering Jiribam district." Despite the CMO’s claims, Jiribam remained unaffected and (by and large) peaceful till May-June 2024 when the decomposed body of 21-year-old Kuki was discovered and shortly followed by a 59-year-old Meitei farmer who was found dead.

While Jiribam did ultimately regress into a site of periodic conflict, it did so only after five long months of communication by the CMO and for reasons that the intelligence input by the CMO failed to mention and what most misguided observers of Manipur wilfully turn a blind eye towards in their prejudiced focus on the abrogation of the Suspension of Operations Agreement with the Kuki-Zomi armed groups. In the absence of designated camps, cadres of the Manipur People’s Army, the armed wing of the UNLF (Pambei) which signed a peace agreement with the Government of India, have been reportedly running riot and engaging in acts of violence against tribal civilians and security forces across Manipur including in Jiribam.

On the face of it — one wonders whether there exists a rogue and undercover, ethnically compromised, and unaccountable intelligence apparatus that reports directly to the Chief Minister. Questions must be asked of the Chief Minister — where he was getting the intelligence inputs from and if there is such a web of operatives that is leaking information selectively and functioning without a professional chain of command and processes, norms and structures for accountability that otherwise regulates the Manipur Police. Gujarat in the last decade and more recently, [in a different form] in Telangana are shining examples of a ‘parallel state’ being operated by the political executive.

If true, it could potentially amount to serious illegality and blatant unconstitutional use of the powers and functions of the Chief Minister by N Biren Singh, who is otherwise alleged to have been recorded in leaked audio tapes proclaiming amongst other things, that he authorised the use of mortar bombs on civilians and personally shielded Meitei village guards who snatched away guns from the state police armouries.

Fast-forward to 25 September the DGP and the Security Adviser, issued a joint statement and clarified, that [the input] regarding the infiltration of 900 trained Kuki militants “…was verified from different quarters and it could not be substantiated on ground. There is no basis currently to believe in any such input... [the public] are advised not to believe in rumours or unverified information...” Just a few hours after the joint statement was circulated, the Secretary to the CM, had also sent a written communication to inter alia the Security Adviser and the DGP, that “it is now ascertained that the possibility of any such misadventure by armed groups is remote. The public need not worry further in this regard.” Curiously — the joint statement by the two top-ranking officials within the security establishment in Manipur, carefully fails to mention the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) as the original source of “the input”.

Two events that occurred in the interregnum between when the intelligence input was first shared on 16 September by the CMO and withdrawn on 25 September require closer dissection. The Security Adviser held a press conference in Imphal on 21 September where he validated the intelligence inputs of the entry of 900 Kuki militants on 28 September as “100% correct unless it is proven wrong”. He went a step further and claimed that the “intelligence input” was discussed in a meeting of the multi-agency Strategy and Operations Group of the Unified Command, which also has representatives from the 57 Mountain Division HQs of the Indian Army and the Assam Rifles.

In a surprising and bizarre turn of events, less than 24 hours later, the Dimapur-based 3 Corps of the Indian Army through a now-deleted post on its official X account publicly sought information from the Security Adviser on the intelligence inputs. While it may appear comical at first glance, it is a disturbing thought that false and alarmist inputs received from a non-security official (which threw the entire state to the edge) were allowed to pass as gospel truth without consultation and cross verification by potentially two high-level multi-agency intelligence sharing and coordination grids comprised of state and central agencies i.e., the Subsidiary Multi-Agency Centre and the inter-agency Operational Intelligence Group chaired by the DGP, Manipur within the Unified Headquarters (UHQ).

In an editorial published on 26 September, the Imphal Times has quite rightly charged the security officials for mismanagement, lack of accountability and [risking] inflaming an already volatile situation and questioned their capability to handle the situation in Manipur. To quote the edit, “…It’s one thing to fail to detect a threat, it’s another to raise the alarm on a significant issue and then declare the threat non-existent without offering any transparency.”

But even the edit misses a critical point — of how the security establishment perhaps was forced to play the role of ‘sacrificial lamb(s)’ in the deceptive narrative that the Chief Minister has been propagating on the issue of handing him the UHQ. In this month alone, Meitei civil society, students and intellectuals have coalesced around his demand for “total control” of the UHQ. He also has reportedly met the Governor of Manipur to demand the same. In this endeavour, the BJP Chief Minister also found an unlikely ally in the Congress MP from the Inner Manipur constituency, who has attempted to constitutionalise the demand and project it as a “flagrant violation of [constitutional schemes] of the federal structure”.

However, a careful reading of the order reconstituting the Unified Headquarters dated 31 May 2024, issued by the Governor of Manipur is instructive to understand the grand schisms of political actors in the Valley across party lines. Here, note that the Unified Headquarters has three sub-groups i.e., out of the three, two are chaired by the Security Adviser i.e., the Combined Headquarters which meets once a month and the Strategy and Operations Group, which meets every fortnight. However, logically, and as also explained by the former Eastern Army Commander, (Retd) Lt Gen Kalita in an interview with NELive, the political executive remains in charge of law and order in Manipur on the simple premise that while the Security Adviser is the chair of the CHQ, he is appointed by the Government of Manipur.

In any event, the order clearly states, “that the Chief Minister, Manipur can call a meeting as and when required and he will lead such a meeting”. In fact, it must also be clarified that the Chief Minister has chaired a meeting of the UHQ on at least one occasion i.e., 3 July 2024, after the UHQ was reconstituted on 31 May 2024. The same has been recorded in a sworn affidavit cum status report dated 9 July 2024, signed by the Chief Secretary, Manipur that was placed before the Supreme Court of India.

Overall, this latest flip-flop by the non-military arm of the security establishment is direct evidence of it being a willing participant in the grand designs being hatched by the political executive in Imphal, to prolong the conflict by playing on the insecurities of the people of Manipur through the invocation of an ‘outsider enemy’ and keeping them embroiled in speculation and conspiracy theories. Since the sensational, selectively leaked, and unverified inputs shared by a non-intelligence political source could not be substantiated then what did it do?

It created fodder online and for most mainstream media outlets to build a hateful narrative that sought to demonise the Kuki-Zomi community as foreign aggressors. At a broader level: it is a clear instance of the “scripting of political narratives by the security establishment appears to be gathering pace in India” as Josy Joseph had warned us in a different context in his book, The Silent Coup, A History of India’s Deep State. Finally, I hope that better sense prevails and the people in the Valley can recognise that justice is an indivisible concept, and they are merely pawns in a game being played by their political masters.

[Postscript: In the last 18 months, reportage has on a few occasions tried to reduce the ethnic conflict into a social media propaganda “war” between the two warning communities based on ‘database analytics’. I hope those who said so could reflect on their stories and are able to recognise that the asymmetry of power plays on the ground as well in building narratives.]