The Joint Tribes Council Manipur has set a 48-hour deadline for central and state authorities to locate and return the severed head of a Naga man who died in an attack in Kangpokpi district on Saturday, with the body's post-mortem examination placed on hold pending the head's return to his family.
A decapitated body, later identified as belonging to 52-year-old Ajinbou Ringkangmai, was received at Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal late on Sunday evening. A gun attack on Makui Ashang village in Kangpokpi on Saturday left four people dead.
Footage that allegedly depicted his head alongside a group of armed individuals in military-style clothing spread widely across social media on Saturday. According to a statement released by the council on Sunday, the whereabouts of the Ajinbou R leader had yet to be established.
The post-mortem examination would proceed only once the head had been returned to relatives, allowing for a proper burial. The organisation declared it would not permit further interference with the body, objecting to what it described as the display of the deceased's remains as a prize by armed groups, and attributed responsibility for the renewed unrest to both state and central authorities, characterising the act as a grave violation of human dignity.
The council announced that, should the head go unrecovered within the 48-hour window, it would move to impose the harshest available penalties in pursuit of accountability.
On Monday, N. Biren Singh — who previously served as Manipur's Chief Minister — made his way to JNIMS hospital, where the bodies of two Naga men, among them Ringkangmai, had been brought back for their final rites.
Fatalities from unconnected episodes of violence spread across Kamjong, Ukhrul, and Kangpokpi over the course of Friday and Saturday, with nine lives lost in total. On Friday night, armed men opened fire on a woman — a mother of five — in Chassad, a settlement where Kuki residents make up the bulk of the population, located within Kamjong district, an area where Naga residents are the predominant community; that killing set off the unrest that followed.
Armed clashes between Kuki and Naga militant factions broke out in the wake of her death, with the gunfire persisting through to Saturday morning.
Clashes between the Kuki and Naga communities have left at least 50 people dead and reduced numerous homes to ash since February, according to available accounts of the unrest. Communal clashes between Meitei communities from the Imphal Valley and Kuki communities from the surrounding hill areas left more than 300 people dead, with 49 others still unaccounted for and large numbers of residents uprooted from their homes.
