Manipur Violence: Rape, Arson, and Looting But Not a Single Conviction as Divided State Enters Fourth Year of Strife

It will be difficult to wish happy birthday to the infant I met in a Kuki-Zo refugee camp in a church compound in Churachandpur some weeks after the ethnic clashes began in 2023. He will soon start his fourth year in a shelter for the displaced. The violence that tore Manipur apart along its ethnic fault lines completes three years on 3 May in a condition worse than when the killings began. The religious separation is inevitable—the Kuki-Zo are almost all Christians, the Meiteis are more mixed. There are Hindus and the ancient Sanamahi religion and Vaishnav Hinduism counted together, and a small number of Christians and Meitei-speaking Muslims. The confrontation between the Meitei community of the Imphal Valley and the Kuki-Zo people of the surrounding hills is sharper and more entrenched than when the first churches burned in the state capital, torched as police and paramilitary watched.Both communities have armed themselves beyond the capacity of any foreseeable disarmament effort. There is peace in the hills where the Naga population, the third group in the ethnic balance, lives. That is no consolation to the state. Manipur—a Tale of Institutionalised Violence Repeating Itself but With a CatchThe ethnic and religious partition of Manipur, enforced by buffer zones and armed checkpoints, has hardened into a quasi-permanent geography of separation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi must have seen this in his one visit. It remains visible on the national highway between Imphal and Churachandpur, monitored by temporary checkpoints: a Meitei women’s group, armed young Meitei men, the Manipur police, Assam Rifles, CRPF, SSB and BSF, battle-ready soldiers of the Indian Army, another SSB-CRPF post, and finally the unofficial post of Kuki armed youth. Through all of this, the Government of India has shown that Manipur is not on the top of its agenda. What Union Home Minister Amit Shah has offered in the fourth year is the redeployment of more CRPF battalions, battle-hardened from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha, where he declared on 31 March 2026 that the Maoist insurgency had ended after six decades. Shah promised these forces would end insurgency in the North East hills before the 2029 general elections in what he called “a golden age for internal security”. He did not say how boots on the ground would produce political mediation, accountability, and constitutional guarantees demanded by both ethnic groups in this local civil war. More CRPF battalions were present in Manipur on 3 May 2023 than in most Indian states. They did not stop the burning of 300 churches or prevent the looting of police armouries. The commanders of Arambai Tenggol, the Meitei private muscle power, remained free. The community divide has not softened. COCOMI, the powerful Meitei civil society umbrella body, announced in mid-April 2026 a complete boycott of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Manipur, demanding accountability for civilian deaths from new Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh. On 25 April, after a statewide shutdown, a COCOMI delegation submitted a seven-point memorandum with the warning: “We will not be submitting a memorandum anymore after this.” The demands reflect Meitei political grievances: abrogating the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with Kuki-Zo armed groups, updating the National Register of Citizens, ending narco-terrorism, and ensuring accountability for the recent Tronglaobi deaths. The Kuki-Zo side has not moderated its position either. Ten MLAs, seven of them from the BJP, have said they will not re-enter government without written commitments on a separate administration. The International Crisis Group, in its February 2025 report, called on New Delhi to urgently address this demand, noting that constitutional precedents exist in the autonomous district councils of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram. That call has gone unanswered into the fourth year. 'Nemcha Betrayed Us...': Tensions Rise as Kuki-Zo Demand Manipur Dy CM's RemovalChief Minister Khemchand Singh, who succeeded the controversial Nongthombam Biren Singh last year, held what was described as the first direct dialogue between Meitei and Kuki-Zo representatives on 21 March 2026. But the underlying questions—accountability for atrocities, the right to return, land rights, and constitutional protection for tribal communities—remained unresolved. Biren Singh resigned on 9 February 2025 only under the threat of a no-confidence motion after 20 months of violence. Even this tentative gesture was followed, a fortnight later, by fresh carnage: a 7 April bomb blast in Bishnupur’s Tronglaobi village killed two Meitei children, triggering clashes in which CRPF fired on Meitei protesters, killing three. At least seven persons have died since that episode. The CRPF seems to have discredited itself thoroughly in the political context of Manipur. Throughout the first phase of violence, the state forces—police, intelligence and civil administration—were widely perceived as institutionally aligned with the Meitei community. The Supreme Court observed an “absolute breakdown of law and order”. The PUCL Independent People’s Tribunal, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph, documented in its August 2025 report survivors’ belief that the state either allowed the violence or participated in it. Audio evidence submitted in court suggested that former Chief Minister Biren Singh had prior knowledge of village attacks, with a forensic laboratory determining the voice belonged to him with 93 percent certainty. The Imphal Valley, home of the Meiteis, holds the votes, and the BJP holds the valley. The Kuki-Zo read paramilitary increases as helping Meitei consolidation and boosting Arambai Tenggol, which led mobs to Kuki-Zo villages and beheaded people. The most damning fact today is that not one person appears to have been convicted of murder, rape, or arson committed since 3 May 2023.The Supreme Court expressed shock at the 14-day delay in registering a zero FIR for two women who were stripped, paraded naked, and gang-raped by a mob whose faces were visible in a viral video circulated in July 2023. Its orders transferred certain cases to the CBI. A rape survivor, 18-year-old at the time of her assault, spent nearly three years moving between hospital wards in Guwahati. She died on 10 January 2026 from injuries sustained during the violence. Amnesty International India’s chair Aakar Patel called her death “a devastating indictment of the Indian state’s continuing failure to deliver timely justice to survivors of sexual violence.”As Manipur Gets New CM, His 'Liberal Meitei Image' Faces Test in a Divided StateThe Committee on Tribal Unity spokesman Ng Lun Kipgen said: “Our brave girl survived the violence, but not the silence.” No perpetrator has been arrested, nor has any police officer faced disciplinary proceedings. That silence defines Manipur in 2026. The Government of India’s Commission of Inquiry, now chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Balbir Singh Chauhan after its original head resigned, has had its mandate extended multiple times and runs to May 2026. 'She Fought Till She Couldn't': Death Came Before Justice for Kuki Rape SurvivorBenjamin Mate of the Kuki Organisation for Human Rights Trust says not a single senior official, state bureaucrat, police officer or armed group commander has faced accountability. The government officially confirmed 58,821 displaced persons in 174 relief camps as of March 2026, with 7,894 permanent houses destroyed and 2,646 partially destroyed—figures obtained only after Congress leader Hareshwar Goshwami spent seven months pursuing an RTI application. Imphal Archbishop Dominic Lumon of Imphal said 249 churches were destroyed in the valley by mobs in just the first 36 hours. The government had promised that all displaced persons would return home by 31 March 2026. That deadline passed without a single return. Kuki-Zo cannot return to Imphal because their homes either no longer exist or are occupied by others. The national highways between the hills and the valley function as ethnic frontlines that members of both communities cannot safely cross. Around 60,000 persons remain in relief camps, many run by church organisations in the hills. Several thousand others—in Delhi, Bengaluru, Shillong, and Guwahati—receive no official recognition as internally displaced persons and have no status under any Central government scheme. Human rights defender Babloo Loitongbam, himself a Meitei who faced assault and threats for speaking out, says thousands are still unable to return home, not by choice but because of fear and insecurity. Without state intervention and guarantees of safety, no one can return. Among the least reported dimensions of the crisis is its devastation of children’s education. Over 200 tribal schools in conflict areas have been closed since May 2023. Kuki-Zo student organisations have set up community schools in the Churachandpur district to absorb approximately 15,000 school and college students whose education was disrupted. Two government schools that can accommodate 600 students each are running shifts for 2,000 students apiece. In Imphal, school buildings still standing have been converted into night shelters for the displaced, with classes held by day in shared premises where insufficient classrooms, benches and teachers are the norm. Displaced teachers—Kuki educators who fled Meitei-majority areas and Meitei educators who fled Kuki-majority areas—remain without postings or salaries in many cases. Their services have been disrupted by an administrative system that has not treated displacement as requiring urgent remediation. Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, representing the Manipur Tribal Forum in the Supreme Court, has described 200 tribal schools in the conflict zone as closed. Documentary: The Horrors of Relief Camps in ManipurThe narcotics trade runs beneath the surface of the Manipur conflict. Manipur sits on the border of the Golden Triangle and is a transit point for illicit narcotics entering India from Myanmar. Every community is implicated. The International Crisis Group’s February 2025 report stated that “all of Manipur’s ethnic groups are involved in the illicit drug trade originating in Myanmar.” The Biren Singh government weaponised this into a communal slur. The Kuki-Zo were branded “narco-terrorists”, a trope that his administration and associated Meitei civil society groups amplified on social media to delegitimise the community. Between November 2025 and February 2026, security forces destroyed over 2,618 acres of poppy cultivation in various operations. But this does not touch the trafficking networks, which remain operational across the Myanmar border. The drug economy continues to sustain armed groups on both sides of the ethnic line and provides the BJP government with a rhetorical frame: narco-terrorism. Prime Minister Modi did not visit Manipur for 864 days after the violence began, speaking of the crisis for the first time only on 20 July 2023, more than two months after it erupted.He finally visited on 13 September 2025, a three-hour trip to Churachandpur and Imphal, in which he promised housing for internally displaced persons without specifying location or timeline. Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said:“It is unfortunate that he allowed this to go on for so long, with so many killed and so much strife, before deciding to visit. That has not been the tradition of Prime Ministers in India.” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk urged Indian authorities to investigate the root causes of the conflict in compliance with international human rights obligations. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom documented the targeting of Kuki-Zo Christians and called for accountability. Every independent international body that examined Manipur reached the same conclusion. The Government of India has not answered them. Benjamin Mate has stated the irreducible demand: an independent commission to investigate the role of senior officials, state bureaucrats, police officers and armed groups. Without it, impunity will persist. (John Dayal is a writer and activist, and a former President of the All India Catholic Union. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)After Modi's 'Hit and Miss' Visit to Manipur, Kuki-Zo Remain at an Impasse

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As Manipur Violence Turns 3, Nation's Silence Hangs as Heavy as the Divide

The Modi government has shown that Manipur is not on the top of its agenda, John Dayal writes.

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