Bodies Of 3 Women Found In Manipur's Jiribam Amid Hostage Crisis: Sources

Manipur’s Meitei community holds a candlelight vigil in Imphal seeking safe release of hostages

Imphal/New Delhi:

The bodies of three women were brought to a morgue in Assam’s Silchar on Friday, amid tension in neighbouring Manipur’s Jiribam district after three women and three children were taken hostage by suspected Kuki militants on Monday.

The bodies are yet to be identified, sources at the morgue who have seen the bodies told NDTV. The morgue is at Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMHC), some 50 km from Jiribam. The bodies were brought to the morgue at 7 pm on Friday, sources said, adding autopsies of bodies found in Jiribam are done in SMHC due to lack of proper infrastructure in the town.

An infant and a two-and-half-year old child are among the three children who were taken hostage on Monday. The three women hostages include the mother of the two younger children. All are from the Meitei community.

They were kidnapped by a group of suspected Kuki militants from Jiribam’s Bokobera neighbourhood while another group of militants were engaged in a gunfight with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), sources have said.

Ten of the suspected Kuki militants were shot dead in the encounter.

Laisharam Herojit, a low-level worker in the state government, in an interview to NDTV on Wednesday appealed to any group that may have held his family hostage to release them safely. He said a friend of his wife saw them being taken away on a boat by armed people.

The CRPF camp and the police station in Jiribam’s Borobekra are less than 1 km from the Barak River.

Mr Herojit told NDTV he got a call from his wife when shooting and arson broke out in Borobekra on Monday. The call got disconnected and when he dialled her back, he found the phone was switched off.

“She was crying on the phone. She said they were surrounded by a lot of armed people. The call got disconnected, after which I called her back, but the mobile was switched off. My mother-in-law’s phone was also switched off. About an hour later – and we had been searching for a while – a Bengali friend of my wife told us she saw them being taken away in a boat,” Mr Herojit told NDTV.

The Kuki tribes have claimed those who were killed in the encounter were “village volunteers”, an allegation that CRPF and police sources have denied.

The security forces have released what they claimed were weapons – AK and INSAS assault rifles and a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) launcher – recovered from the encounter site, and visuals of police vehicles with numerous bullet holes.