Why Manipur CM’s office warned of Kuki militant attack – and then retracted the claim
Earlier this month, the state police’s claim of military-grade drones being used to drop bombs was also debunked by senior officials.
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On September 17, a letter to Manipur’s security advisor leaked on social media. The message, sent from the chief minister’s office, was alarming.
It warned that “900 Kuki militants” had entered the state from Myanmar and were planning to “launch multiple coordinated attacks on Meitei villages around September 28”.
The militants, said the note signed by N Geoffrey, secretary to Chief Minister N Biren Singh, were “newly trained in [the] use of drone-based bombs, projectiles, missiles and jungle warfare”.
It was not clear what the source of Geoffrey’s information was.
Since May last year, Manipur has been in the grip of an ethnic conflict between the majority Meiteis, who live in the Imphal valley, and the Kuki-Zo tribes, who live in the hills. The violence has led to an unofficial partition of the state on ethnic lines, with no Meiteis in Kuki-Zo areas and vice versa.
Three days after Geoffrey’s note went viral, security advisor Kuldiep Singh in a press conference said that the state had been placed on “high alert” on the basis of the intelligence input. He said the information about possible attacks on Meiteis is “100% correct unless and until it is proven wrong”.
Remarkably, just days later, the state security establishment retracted all such claims of an imminent Kuki militant...
