20 people killed in IO days, AF SPA back, NPP withdrawssupport; Manipur mess now murkier

After nearly 20 months of runaway violence in an Indian state called Manipur, where the writ f the state does not seem to extend beyond the 1 0-kilometre square of the capital, Imphal, and more than 250 people have been killed, 60,000 rendered homeless, and thousands of houses demolished and erased from the face of the earth, Manipur is back in the news once again.

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And this time the powers that control the State at the Centre suddenly seem to be worried, for the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, cancelled his scheduled electioneering trip to Maharashtra and called an emergency meeting in Delhi to discuss the issue. No political leaders were summoned from Manipur for the meeting, just the mandatory Shoguns from the Intelligence Bureau and the military, plus a handful of other pundits. The backdrop to this awakening of the Kumbhakarna of modern-day India was the killing of 10 Kuki armed marauders in the Jiribam district bordering Assam. They were on a revenge strike after a woman belonging to their community was killed on the 7th of November. They decided to attack the Borobekra Police Station at a nondescript village called Jakuradhor, which also has a CRPF post and an IDP camp for Meiteis. The marauding party, numbering about 50 and heavily armed with rocket-propelled grenades, self-loading rifles, and INSAS rifles, made a three-pronged attack. One targeting the police station, the other the relief camp of the Meitei IDPs, and the third on the CRPF post. Theywere successful in the first attempt as they killed two Meiteis and tossed their bodies inside a house that they had also burnt. They were held off at the police station, where they exchanged fire with the police and the CRPF. It was the third column that went to attack the CRPF post outside that met its nadir. In their hurry to scalp CRPF scalps, they did not notice the armoured personnel vehicle, which had a manned light machine gun mounted atop. And when the staccato of automatic fire began and hot lead spewed out of the LMG, stitching death along its path, and the full magazine had been emptied, 10 of the Kuki marauders lay dead, their lifeless bodies clutching their weapons or strewn alongside. But the Kukis managed to round up six persons. They included a 60-year-old woman. YTumlembam Rani Devi, a31-year-old housewife; Telem Thoibi Devi, and her eight-year-old daugh