An act most foul
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: December 01 2011 -

Scene at the entrance of Sangai Festival, blast site on November 30 2011 :: Pix - Hueiyen Lanpao

The orgy of violence continues. Yet another act of senseless violence claimed a life and left four others seriously injured.

Words fail to convey the sense of outrage, anger and frustration we feel at the latest instance of a bomb blast. Every right thinking person in the state needs to condemn and come out against this dastardly act.

Over the last few years, the people of the state have had to face many such blasts which have claimed numerous lives and left many maimed for life.

And Everytime, condemnation pours in, everytime there is appeal from the public not to repeat such inhuman acts and everytime we pray and hope that we have seen the last of such violence.

But everytime such senseless violence recur, we are made to face the despairing feeling that our state is in the midst of a downward plunge into a dark recess of intolerance, irrationality and violence with little hope of a turn around.

What is frightening for the society as the whole is the casualness with which some individuals/organisations are willing to sacrifice, take lives for a 'cause', for redressal of an 'injustice' or merely for not following their dictates.

Life in the state has become extremely cheap, there is no safety anywhere, you could be walking, running, laughing, talking, driving one moment, and the next moment, you could be dead.

For the perpetrators of such senseless violence, a human being is no longer someone who is living, breathing, thinking, with likes and dislikes, wants and desires, hopes and aspirations, linked to the rest of the society through the family, relatives, friends and acquaintances, he has become a mere number which makes up the body count.

Life is precious, out of life, out of living flows every other thing - rights, duties, liberty, dreams, well being, service to the society and what not.

When a life is snuffed out unnaturally, a whole world connected with that person comes crashing down.

The unfortunate victim in this blast at the Sangai Festival site at Hafta Kangjeibung is said to be a rickshaw puller who carried some goods (which also contained the explosives, in all likelihood, without his knowledge) for a mere Rs 20/- and paid with his life.

And what a gruesome sight it was and how painful it must have been, death to him must have come as a relief in the end. His death will not only rob his family of a breadwinner but the manner of his death will leave a deep psychological scar on his dear and dear ones which will take quite some healing. This is the human price we pay when such acts are committed.

At this time of tragedy we would not like to pick faults with anyone, but there are certain things which we are duty bound to draw the attention of the concern authorities.

The first is the precious time lost in evacuating the victims to the nearest hospital. The reason could be the suspicion of presence of another bomb at the site which the deceased rickshaw puller is reported to have given an indication about.

But the very fact that quite some time was lost in the face of this apprehension suggest lack of preparedness of such an eventually.

And sadly, as was evident from the video footages, there was utter lack of urgency to save a person's life among those present at the blast site.

Also the festival site does not seem to have any medical facilities, in terms of ambulance, doctors and other staffs on 24 hour call.

The victim who succumbed was evacuated in a police pick up truck instead of the sanitized environ of an ambulance which the extent of his injuries demanded.

This lack of medical facilities on call, a serious lack, has to be remedied in the next edition.

And let Manipur see many more such festivals without any tragedy in future.