'Dead man' returns; body fished out
Source: The Sangai Express / Waari Singbul Network
Imphal, October 04 2023:
In a miraculous turn of event, one Satkhothang Kipgen, 49, of Manipur's Kangpokpi district, previously presumed dead in the raging ethnic violence between two communities returned home alive on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an unidentified male's dead body was fished out from a river on Wednesday in Churachandpur, prompting the families whose near and dear ones went missing in the ongoing ethnic crisis to wait eagerly for its identification.
Kipgen, the "dead man", revealed that he simply lost his way after consuming a lot of liquor.
He was found alive by a team of Manipur police along the National Highway near Longjang village on Tuesday in Kangpokpi district.
He was accorded a "fallen hero" who died "in defence of our ancestral land and freedom" by the media cell of the Kuki Students Organization.
The Committee of Tribal Unity (CoTU) had alleged that Kipgen was abducted by armed miscreants on September 30 and had called a shutdown on NH-37 to protest.
Meanwhile, in the Churachandpur incident, owing to the highly decomposed state of the body fished out from the river, the identity as well as the cause of death could not be established.
Soon after the body was found floating in the river around noon, a team of Churachandpur police station rushed to the site and retrieved it using ropes before depositing it at the mortuary of the district hospital for autopsy.
An Unnatural Death (UD) case has been registered at the station under Section 174 CrPC for investigation.
In the ethnic conflict, till date, as many as 175 people have been killed, 1,108 have been injured and 32 are missing since May 3 .
Of the total number of fatalities, nine are still unidentified, official sources said.
On the other hand, members of the Joint Students' Body (JSB) of Churachandpur have stepped up their poster campaign for justice on Wednesday, seeking a high-level probe into the killing and sexual assault cases of the people of the community in the on-going conflict.
They demanded that the incidents, including the burning alive of a mother-son in an ambulance, be probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) .
As a mark of symbolic protest, the protesters displayed posters and hung effigies at various places in the district to indicate insecurity of life and denial of justice.