The Central Reserve Police Force’s (CRPF) CoBRA unit on Tuesday conducted house-to-house searches in and around Manipur’s Taphou village in Senapati district after the gunfight that injured one CRPF jawan.
District police personnel and the CoBRA team carried out the search and combing operation in Taphou Naga Liangmai village and Taphou Kuki village during the early hours of Tuesday, officials said. Officials said the operation was carried out without resistance from residents. No arrests or detentions were reported during the searches.
The operation came a day after a CRPF jawan sustained an injury to his foot during a gunfight between security forces and unidentified armed individuals after two houses belonging to separate communities were set ablaze by an unidentified group of people, triggering tension in the area. One of the two houses belonged to a Kuki family while the other belonged to the Poumai community (a sub-community of the Naga community).
Tensions escalated between the Kuki and Naga community in the area after the May 13 twin ambush by unknown armed individuals at Noney and Kangpokpi district killing four, including three church leaders and one Naga man.
On the same day, 48 civilians belonging to Naga and Kuki-Zo were kidnapped by both the groups in retaliatory tension. Later, nearly after a month of captivity all the hostages were set free however. Six Naga men, however, were found dead near Kharam Vaiphei (Kuki village) in Kangpokpi district.
The case has been under investigation by National Investigating Agency (NIA) and as a part of the investigation four individuals including a couple have been arrested in the month of July on two separate occasions.
The ethnic clashes in Manipur began between the Meitei and Kuki communities before involving almost every community. The state’s Meitei and the Kuki-Zo communities shut each other out from the areas they dominate since ethnic clashes began in May 2023 and left at least 260 people dead and displaced 60,000.