On Monday, the Manipur administration revealed that the video of a man being burned, which appeared the previous day, was really of an incident that happened in the district of Kangpokpi, which is dominated by the Kuki, in early May.
Security advisor to the Manipur government Kuldiep Singh claimed during a news briefing in Imphal that the incident is connected to a previous viral video of two Kuki women being paraded naked and raped.
The seven-second video showed a man lying down next to barbed wire with burn marks on some of his body and was wearing a black shirt and camouflage trousers. Gunshots can be heard in the distance, as well as the voices of persons who are ostensibly standing close to him.
It’s not clear whether the man was burnt alive, or he was already dead before being burnt. “The name of the person (in the video is) Laldinthanga Khongsai, aged 37 years…resident of Paokongching village in Kangpokpi district,” Singh said.
He said that the incident reportedly happened on May 4, which was the day after the start of the ethnic hostilities. According to Singh, the victim, a Kuki, is currently resting in the mortuary at Imphal’s Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences.
“It has been requested by the DGP to hand over this case to the CBI as this case is also a sequel of that incident in which two persons were killed and two women were paraded naked, the video of which went viral,” Singh said.
In July, a video of two women who were paraded naked by a large mob and one of them later allegedly gang raped had surfaced sparking widespread condemnation. The police had arrested seven persons related to the incident and investigation of the case was transferred to CBI in August.
Reacting to the video, Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF), a Kuki organisation termed the incident as “shocking and barbaric” and blamed that the state government of being “selection in application of justice”.
“The video is a harrowing testament to the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kuki-Zo community by the majority Meiteis,” ITLF said in a statement released on Monday.
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Source: HT
