Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, December 21 2010:
Wives and family members of the 27 labourers held captive by Lamta village authority for the last 36 days pleaded today for their safe release.
The 27 labourers were reportedly 'hired' by three men on November 16 in the pretext of employing them in timber logging in Khuilong village of Tamenglong district under two local contractors namely Khangbo and Khangpui.
According to the family members, the village authority of Lamta village is holding the 27 labourers captive charging them of illegally logging and felling trees in the jurisdiction of their village which shares a boundary with Khuilong village where they were purported to have been employed by the said three men.
The three absconding men have been identified as Amom Sanajaoba of Wangoo Tera Khong, Amom Bira Singh of Wangoo Naoda Khong and Sanasam Samjai Singh of Wangoo Chuthek Leikai.
Interestingly, all the 27 labourers are also from the same area that is Wangoo Tera Khong and Wangoo Sabal under Kumbi constituency.
N Ibohal, a social worker from Kumbi informed a press meet held at Manipur Press Club that the 27 labourers were taken captive on December 6 .
Since the area and the village are unfamiliar to the captives' families, contacts and meetings with the contractors have not been established as yet.
The government should do what it can to rescue the labourers from the captors, he said, which was why an application to that effect was submitted through ADGP V Zathang on December 20 but nothing has been done so far, further the two contractors have even refused to speak up for the labourers.
Ibohal further said that the captive labourers have informed telephonically that they overheard the villagers discussing their transfer to another location.
He said they sounded scared while talking over the phone.
Wives and family members of the captives gathered today to register their plight and appealed to the village authority of Lamta village to release their husbands and relatives on humanitarian grounds since they had only gone at the behest of the contractors and agents.
N Ibohal speaking on behalf of the labourers and their families said any unforeseen misfortune happening to the labourers, even genuine cases of death due to sickness while in captivity may result in unnecessary communal conflagration.