Elusive peace: In India’s Manipur, bombs and mortars are civilian weapons

In every instance, Selina Mairembam, 13, attempts to write or eat with her right hand, and the pain and scars remind her of the day she was almost killed by a bomb.

She was knocked out instantly. There was blood all over when she woke up. For a moment, she thought she was dead.

Selina barely speaks now that she has been talkative once. Holding out the jagged pieces of bomb shrapnel that tore through her arm, she whispers to me, “I’m always scared. I’m not afraid to run.

Selina is the great-granddaughter of Mairembam Koireng Singh, the first chief minister of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. A “big rocket” appeared out of nowhere on September 7, 2024, as she was helping a priest prepare a ritual for her grand-aunt’s funeral. She remembers no flash, only the deafening sound – so loud she thought her ears had been blown off.

The former chief minister’s residence was blown up in Moirang town, close to Loktak Lake, northeast India’s largest freshwater lake, by the improvised bomb.

Selina survived with severe injuries, but the missile killed 72-year-old RK Rabei, a priest and event manager. His granddaughter and daughter-in-law discovered his bloody body. Four-year-old Gianna Rajkumari often wakes up at night, screaming – haunted by the image of her grandfather’s mutilated body.

Gianna’s mother, Palmei Houjellu, was nine months along at the time. The 35-year-old from Moirang had gone with her daughter to attend the ritual organised by her father-in-law.

Just before the attack, Houjellu and Gianna had left for a quick five-minute drive home to get some supplies for the ceremony. That saved them.

A boy was born a day later from Houjellu. But even as she cradles new life, death still lingers in their home.

She claimed that “my daughter saw the bloodied body of her grandfather.” “She still wakes up screaming at night. She persistently inquires, “Who killed Nana?” Why? ‘ And I can’t help but bereave her.

“Did she deserve this”?

The Meitei community, which constitutes the state’s largest ethnic group, is Hovjellu’s Hovjellu. This state has been devastated by a deadly ethnic conflict that has persisted for the past two years. The violence was sparked by a dispute over an affirmative action measure. The state government was given the order on April 14, 2023, by the Manipur High Court, to recommend Scheduled Tribe status to the Meitei community, which the Supreme Court later criticized.

In response, tribal communities that already had these benefits organised protest rallies on May 3, while the Meitei community held counter-rallies and counter-blockades. Soon after the clashes between the Kuki and Meitei groups near Churachandpur and Bishnupur districts, widespread arson and destruction erupted. The conflict has never fully subsided – more than 260 people have been killed, and more than 65, 000 have been displaced.

Chief Minister N Biren Singh, a footballer-turned-politician who is Meitei and has been accused of inflaming tensions in the state, resigned in February amid growing public pressure and threat of a vote of no confidence from the state legislature.

Like the bomb that struck Hovjellu’s father-in-law, a wide range of mortars, grenades, homemade rockets, and thousands of weapons with lakhs of rounds of ammunition have landed in the hands of warring communities over the past 20 months.

In recent weeks, public outcry has taken Singh’s political slam, and security forces have been able to stop new violence. But with hamlet after hamlet armed and the state’s credibility at an all-time low, military experts and local communities say Manipur is a tinderbox that could explode at any time, again.

‘ Never happened before ‘

Under the condition of anonymity, a senior security official who has witnessed the Manipur conflict since it first broke out in 2023, told Al Jazeera: “

“Within no time, right before our eyes, we saw a state slipping into an unprecedented conflict. Because these are our own people, we felt helpless.

The official called it a failure of the state – marked by a lack of will and intent to act decisively.

“Security forces are positioned in the middle, trying to avert conflict,” according to the statement. “Two ethnic groups are almost at war. Our priority has always been to prevent violence and maintain peace on the ground. However, if the state had acted more decisively at this point, mass displacement could have been avoided and so many weapons would not have fallen into civilian hands.

Major Digvijay Singh Rawat, another decorated Indian soldier belonging to the 21st Battalion of The Parachute Regiment (Special Forces), is the recipient of the Kirti Chakra – an award given for extraordinary courage and valour – for his time with the military in Manipur during the current conflict.

He supported the senior official’s assertion, saying that there has never been a situation like it in Manipur. “Even the military avoids using mortar bombs in villages with civilians – even when armed rebels might be hiding there. Use of these weapons in civilian areas constitutes a grave human rights violation,” he claimed. “But in Manipur, we saw an unprecedented use of mortars, bombs, and all kinds of improvised explosives by civilians – powered by underground groups on both sides – without any fear”.

“Civils are starting this kind of war against one another, something that has never happened before in any part of the country.”

The bombs often didn’t kill as many people as bullets have, only because civilians did not know how to fire them with precision, he says. However, Rawat claims that “bombs flying in broad daylight did their job… they created grave fear.”

According to the state government, more than 6, 000 arms, 600, 000 rounds of ammunition, and more than 28, 000 bombs and explosives – including 51mm mortars, 2-inch mortars, hand grenades, stun grenades, tear gas shells, picket grenades, and so on – were looted from police stations and state armouries in Imphal and the hills since the violence erupted.

Only 2,500 weapons, fewer than 3, 000 explosives, and less than 40, 000 rounds of ammunition have been recovered so far, including those that were surrendered last week. Most of these are single-barrel and double-barrel firearms, country-made weapons, and.303 rifles – not the more sophisticated weapons like AKs and INSAS rifles that were stolen. According to security officials, more than 3, 000 weapons and tens of thousands of ammunition rounds are still missing.

Many of the weapons recovered and surrendered since the conflict began are far more advanced than those looted from state armouries. M4s, M16s, sniper rifles, machineguns, and handguns that Myanmar and Bangladesh smuggle are some of these. However, neither side has surrendered the more sophisticated weapons they are known to possess.

Both sides also improvised their own local weapons and heavy weapons. Kuki-Zo fighters have been found using improvised rockets made from galvanised iron and metal pipes, known as “pumpi”, while Meitei fighters have developed their own makeshift wheeled mortars.

The end result: Civilians have launched mortar and bomb attacks on each other while trained in fighter groups and looted weapons. Villages were set on fire overnight. The bodies of civilians were scattered, including children with skulls shattered, charred women, and beheaded men.

Al Jazeera&nbsp, has accessed videos of men – both Meitei and Kuki – cheering as they fired mortars and tested homemade rockets at each other. The authenticity of these videos has been verified by security officials. Al Jazeera has also confirmed that many young Meitei and Kuki civilians died after their bombs and rockets exploded while they were launching them because they did not know how to fire them properly. This is the first time people have used heavy weapons against one another in India’s northeast, which has a long history of ethnic violence.

And no one has been spared.

This conflict was unwinnable, according to the statement.

42-year-old LS Mangboi Lhungdim, a Kuki singer-songwriter from the town of Churachandpur, had never held a gun before the conflict broke out. He helped to transport essential supplies to the front line while serving as a village volunteer during the fighting.

In August 2023, he left for the “frontline” (the unofficial border within the state where Meiteis and Kukis fought each other) near Khosabung village, between Churchandanpur and Bishnupur districts, about 25km (16 miles) from his home, on one such assignment. He never returned.

Lhungdim died at three in the morning on 31 August while being evacuated from Khosabung. The Churachandpur district hospital’s deputy superintendent, Seanboi Vaiphei, informed us that the hospital did not have the necessary resources to treat him. So with the help of some civil society organisations, he was rushed to Aizawl, the capital of the neighbouring state of Mizoram, a 16-hour drive from the hill district. Kukis were unable to access the Tertiary Care Hospitals in Meitei-majority Imphal.

“He was hit by a mortar bomb. My children and I were unable to even recognize his face when we arrived at the hospital. My kids had to see his exploded body”, said Neimnilhing Lhungdim, his wife.

“This war was unwinnable,” he declared.

Autopsies of victims accessed by Al Jazeera revealed injuries that experts say are clear indicators of the heavy weaponry being used in the conflict: deep splinter wounds with metal fragments embedded 5-6cm inside soft tissue, blast injuries causing complete loss of limbs, skulls shattered beyond recognition, internal bleeding in multiple organs, a sign of shockwave damage from explosions.

As soon as staff members at a renowned medical facility in Imphal received “bodies with sniper and splinter wounds – used for shooting and killing from a much greater distance,” a senior official at the institute confirmed that they had noticed a “shift in the type of bullet injuries.”

On the other side of the border, a hospital official in Churachandpur, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that the medical facility had received bodies “with severe splinter injuries from bombs or mortars – something we had never encountered before”. Because they are not permitted to speak to the media, the two officials requested anonymity.

What’s worse, there’s little hope that victims will see justice. The accused are described by many police complaints as “Kuki militants” or “Majority Meitei community and Arambai Tenggol,” a Meitei armed militia that has been accused of major excesses during the conflict, which the police claim is as good as “unknown persons.”

This story of death by bombs spans Manipur.

Richard Hemkholun, Neikim’s 55th son, was lost in the conflict by her.

Richard, a political science graduate from the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, died on the same day as LS Mangboi while serving as a village volunteer guarding Khoirentak Khunou village in Churachandpur district. Our son’s mother said to us, “We had no other choice but to make him a village volunteer – not to kill, but to protect our people.” The other side did the same”.

Neikim and her husband, who cannot walk properly and makes less than a dollar per day, are now employed as contractual laborers on a small plot of land in Churachandpur.

“I wish this war had never started. Neikim grinned as she washed the dirt off her son’s guitar and college degree to show that the government had done something.

No one has won this war, according to legend.

Amid this devastation, an audio tape leaked last August prompted a political uproar. A voice that purportedly resembles that of Singh, the chief minister at the time, makes alleged bomb-use claims and secretly requests explosives from security personnel in it.

Singh, who belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules both federally and in Manipur, has insisted that the tape is doctored, though an analysis by Truth Labs Forensic Services, a private nonprofit, said that comparisons with samples of Singh’s public speeches showed that there was a 93 percent match.

According to experts, the tape would be a damning indictment of Singh’s government’s role in starting the conflict if it were to be accurate.

Al Jazeera sought a response from Sharda Devi, a BJP leader from Manipur, about the Truth Labs report on the tape, but she did not reply.

The Modi government has also imposed federal dominance over Manipur after resigning as governor. Since then, armed fighters from both the Meitei and Kuki-Zo sides have surrendered some of their weapons, but most of them still remain unaccounted for. The governor has until March 6 to voluntarily give up his or her 14-day ultimatum.

The fighters on both sides have pleaded for immunity from prosecution. However, the state itself is confronted with a grim reality: in the majority of cases, no evidence exists of the crime committed. Was it a civilian-turned-armed village volunteer, an armed militia member, or a rebel from an underground group?

The government’s efforts to bring about peace are too late for families like Houjellu and Neimnilhing.

A frail 63-year-old Paulianthang Vaiphei, father of Pausondam Vaiphei – the third bombing death in Churachandpur – struggles to speak, his voice heavy with grief after losing his only son. Palsondam, a 29-year-old, was a member of the village council in Kangvai.

According to the First Information Report (FIR) filed at Churachandpur police station, he was killed in heavy shelling near Kangathei village on August 31.

Source: Aljazeera