Written & Edited By : Aditi Mishra
30 September 2023 ( New Delhi ) : A 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl who went missing two months ago were killed, sparking riots in Manipur. As passions boiled over in the northeastern state over the murder of two Meitei students, hundreds of protesters disobeyed prohibitory orders and attempted to lay siege to chief minister N Biren Singh’s ancestral home in Imphal on Thursday evening. However, security personnel stopped them.A day after an attempt was made to vandalize the home of state BJP president A Sharda Devi in Imphal, a mob of about 500 people tried to attack Singh’s empty, ancestral home in the Heingang neighborhood of Imphal. Security personnel on the ground in Manipur said that over 500 individuals attempted to approach Singh’s private property at Luwangsangbam in Heingang in the evening. They were halted, however, more least 200–300 meters from the CM’s residence. The attempt by the throng to congregate there from several directions necessitated the use of tear gas rounds. The gathering dispersed around 9.15 in the evening, according to a security official on the scene.
The officer proceeded by saying that when the mob moved closer to the CM’s home, authorities also turned off the electricity. “Reports that CM’s home was attacked by a mob are inaccurate and deceptive. The Manipur Police tweeted on X that there is adequate protection in place.
Manipur has been rocked by protests following the deaths of a 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl who vanished two months ago. Photos of their ostensibly lifeless bodies went popular on social media earlier this week.
Residents of Imphal, the 20-year-old male and the 17-year-old girl were last seen together on July 6. The missing couple may have became stranded while evacuating in a region dominated by the Kuki group, at which point they may have been kidnapped and killed, according to Manipur Police. The investigation also showed that the man’s phone had a new SIM card that had been activated in Lamdan, a Kuki-dominated area, on July 7, a day after the two went missing, a police officer said, requesting anonymity.
Two days after the state administration restored internet access, on September 25, images of the couple appeared on social media. Two armed men could be seen in the background of one image, which showed them sitting on the ground in what appeared to be a woodland, and another image, which appeared to show them dead on the ground. The woman’s face is obscured in the picture, and the man’s head appears to be missing. The two were dressed similarly to how they appeared in the previous picture. In the second image, their faces are hidden. HT was unable to independently confirm the veracity of the pictures. The state authorities on Tuesday night halted mobile internet and data services through VPN for five days after the images sparked outrage and went viral on social media within hours.
Two groups of individuals approached the CM’s ancestral home on Thursday from different directions, but they were stopped, a second police officer informed news outlet PTI.
To help with visibility, the authorities turned off the electricity throughout the region. As protesters burned tires on highways, more barriers were built.
