‘No one to protect us’: In Manipur, civilians easy targets as armed groups step up violence

The Sunday church service had just ended in the hill-top village of Longpi in Manipur’s Noney district on the afternoon of September 13.

Longpi is home to about 320 Kuki residents, village officials said.

A group of five women and two men were on their way to gather some rice and wash some clothes when a group of 45-50 militants attacked the village.

“They were walking from one part of the village to another when they came under attack,” David Gangte, the son of Longpi village chief and a primary school government teacher at the village, told Scroll.

Gangte said the group found themselves cornered in a narrow lane when the militants opened fire with “automatic weapons”.

Two people – Thangvel Roel Gangte, 43, and Julie Singson 22 – were killed on the spot. Singson was two months pregnant at the time. Another 22-year-old woman, Ester Gangte, sustained severe bullet injuries and died later in a hospital in Churachandpur, about 250 km away.

They were not the only civilians to have lost their lives in a deadly surge of violence in Manipur.

In a span of a month – between August 27 and September 27 – 23 civilians, including at least seven women, were killed in the hill districts of Manipur, where Nagas and...

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