KANGPOKPI (MANIPUR): Markets, buses and autorickshaws stayed shut across Manipur's Kangpokpi district on Friday as a 48-hour shutdown took hold over the killing of a Kuki woman in firing at a paddy field on the Kangpokpi-Senapati border a day earlier, officials and local reports said. The shutdown was called by the Kangpokpi-based Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU).

Source: The Sikh Times

The woman, identified in reports as Kimneineng Chongloi of Taphou Kuki village — reports put her age between 40 and 42 — was harvesting paddy at around 11 am on Thursday, November 12, when firing broke out between suspected rival armed groups in the area between Taphou and Kailengjang in neighbouring Senapati district. She was found dead in the field, still holding the sickle she had been using, according to officials cited by multiple outlets.

Source: Nation Press

Two villagers from the same area, Sehngam (David) Chongloi, 34, and Lamkhochon Chongloi, 46, were hit by bullets and taken to hospitals in Kangpokpi. Sehngam was later referred to Imphal, where he was admitted to the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, The Sikh Times reported.

Allegations from both sides, no attackers officially named for the first firing

A Kuki organisation alleged that the NSCN-IM and ZUF-K were responsible for the killing — an allegation, not an established finding. Preliminary reports carried by other outlets said Kuki armed men allegedly fired first on Naga cultivators in the area, prompting retaliatory fire. Manipur Police's statement on the first incident did not identify any suspected attackers, Power Corridors reported on Friday, and no arrests in connection with either Thursday incident had been publicly confirmed as of November 13.

Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Nemcha Kipgen condemned the killing in a statement shared on X on November 12, calling it the brutal murder of a defenceless Kuki-Zo woman who was harvesting paddy near Taphou Kuki village, and called for an impartial investigation, The Daily Jagran reported.

Source: The Daily Jagran

Police said additional security forces, including CRPF, BSF and Assam Rifles personnel, were deployed in the area, and that security forces cordoned off nearby villages and launched search operations to prevent further escalation. The flare-up also prompted advisories against non-essential travel along National Highway-2, the Imphal-Dimapur arterial road, Nation Press reported.

A second firing the same afternoon, and a bias allegation against police

In a separate incident at about 3 pm on Thursday, suspected armed men fired several rounds from the Lungter Hills side towards farmers harvesting paddy near Sinakeithel village in Ukhrul district, according to police reporting cited by The Daily Jagran. One farmer, Newton Mahung, 45, of Sinakeithel, was injured in the right shoulder.

On Friday, Kuki Inpi Manipur, the apex Kuki organisation, accused Manipur Police of ethnic bias in how it described the two Thursday incidents — naming suspects in one account but not the other — and gave the police a 72-hour deadline from its November 13 statement to clarify and take corrective action, Power Corridors reported. That bias claim is the organisation's allegation; police had not publicly answered it in the reports available on Friday.

Source: Power Corridors

Backdrop: two youths found dead, and a jurisdiction dispute

Thursday's firing came amid CoTU protests over the abduction and killing of two Kuki-Zo youths from the same Taphou Kuki village — Tinginlun Chongloi, 21, and Paoginlal Hangshing, 20 — who went missing on October 28 and whose bodies were recovered in Senapati district on November 1. Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh has said the state government handed the investigation into those killings to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). CoTU has also demanded that Taphou Kuki village be brought under Kangpokpi district police jurisdiction instead of the Senapati district police station — a long-running dispute that shapes how incidents in the area are policed.