The logic behind illogical chargesheet
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: May 17, 2024 -

WHILE the conclusion arrived at by India's top anti-terror body, National Investigation Agency (NIA) that the arms looted from police armouries were used in attacking Kuki-Chin people in the ongoing Manipur violence made perfect sense; the submission made in the chargesheet submitted to the Gauhati High Court after its investigation into the case of arresting five armed men in September 2023 that the "China-Myanmar module" of NSCN(IM) gave logistics and other support to the proscribed organisations of the Meetei/Meitei seems to have left everyone scratching their heads.

It was only after the supposedly peaceful tribal solidarity march taken out in the hill districts on May 3, 2023 against the demand of the Meetei/Meitei community to be recognised as scheduled tribe (ST) turned violent only in Kuki-Chin inhabited areas and the security personnel failed to protect the life and properties of the Meetei, who are minority in these areas, that their fellow Meetei people in the valley cried for providing arms and started looting the police armouries not only to protect themselves but also repulse the attacks of armed Kuki-Chin people.

This is a common knowledge which no one can deny today.

So, even without the findings from forensic examination to establish link between the arms looted from police armouries and those confiscated by the security personnel, use of simple logic would have sufficed in understanding why and for what purpose angry mob had repeatedly stormed the police armouries to loot the arms and ammunition.

Of course, in whose hands these looted arms and ammunition finally landed and how they were used is topic for another day.

But the larger question at the moment is what if the government and its security forces had been proactive enough and succeeded in containing the violence when it first broke out?

If that had been the case, would anyone dare to loot the police armouries despite knowing the prospect effacing the investigation of NIA?

Even if answers to these hypothetical questions may be easier to find, one question that has perplexed the mind of everyone in the chargesheet filed by the NIA is the "China-Myanmar module" of NSCN (IM) giving logistics and other support to cadres of two proscribed organisations of the Meetei to infiltrate India in order to exploit the current ethnic unrest in Manipur.

Apart from the implausibility of anyone coming to the rescue of Meetei in the ongoing ethnic conflict with Kuki-Chin people, the background note of the chargesheet claiming that the leadership of NSCN(IM), which is peace talks with the Government of India for the last 27 years, promised safe passage, arms, ammunition, explosives, and other terrorist hardware to the armed cadres of KYKL and PLA to infiltrate into Indian territory from their camps in Myanmar to carry out terror attacks in Manipur sounds too good to be true.

Of course, it's a historical fact that these insurgent organisations had lived and trained together at one time but that shared struggle and camaraderie has become stuff of folklore today after they parted ways to forge their own respective destinies, which could be best described as "at odds with each other".

When the Meetei people in Manipur have all along remained steadfast against any attempt to dismember the state and had even prevented Thuingaleng Muivah, general secretary of NSCN (IM), from visiting his own native Village in Ukhrul district to meet his family members, its unthinkable that the leadership of the Naga rebel group would do anything to help the Meetei, let alone provide safe passage, arms, ammunition, explosives, and other terrorist hardware to the armed cadres of KYKL and PLA for waging war against India.

It's no wonder NSCN (IM) has denounced the allegation as "not only misleading but cruel and vicious as it is too far from the point of accuracy and morally not ethical at all" and turned the table on by countering that the Government of India is supporting a proxy war against it by using the Myanmar-based Kuki National Army (B), or KNA (B) and People's Defence Force (PDF).

Well, it seems any effort to understand the over one year old ethnic conflict in Manipur is going to become more confusing than ever.