Guwahati
While the teenager and two others were killed in the wee hours on Friday in villages near the border of Bishnupur and Churachandpur districts as unidentified gunmen opened indiscriminate firing, the Manipur police commando was killed in a gun battle with suspected militants at Moirang Turel Mapan in the evening.
Several people were reported to have been injured in the wee hours firing, coming a day after unidentified gunmen shot dead a woman outside a school in the State’s Imphal West district on Thursday. Schools for Classes 1 to 8 reopened after a gap of two months on Wednesday.
Heavily armed militants from either side of the ethnic divide have been targeting security forces and civilians at will. Intermittent firing continued in the area since Thursday night between two communities.
The police commando, identified as Pukhrambam Ranbir, was hit on the head during the exchange of fire and was injured. He was first taken to the district hospital from where he was referred to a hospital in Imphal but he died on the way. The other three casualties including the teenager were killed and several others injured in the villages of Kangvai, Songdo and Awang Lekhai – all of them on the border of two districts- in the early hours of Friday.
Mobs continued to block the movement of security forces in the area. Additional columns have been inducted from alternate routes to tackle the situation, officials said.
A mob of 150-200 people set ablaze two vehicles near the Kangla Fort and tried to snatch weapons from the police, forcing the security forces to fire at the crowd. No casualty was reported though. Two columns of security personnel of the Army and the Assam Rifles moved to the general area of the Songdo village on Friday night to bring the situation under control. Reinforcements of Border Security Force troops was met with mob interference in the Bishnupur market area.
More than 100 people have lost their lives and over 3,000 injured since ethnic violence broke out in the state on May 3, when a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was organised in the hill districts to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.
Violence was also reported from Laitumkhrah in Meghalaya in the early hours on Friday after a fight broke out between two groups and quickly escalated with a mob setting a police car on fire. The two groups even pelted stones at each other and the police station where they had gone to lodge FIRs against each other.
An investigation has been launched to find out the reason behind the flare up.
