A day after the Meitei and Hmar communities of Manipur’s Jiribam agreed to try and prevent arson and exchanges of gun fire in the district at a peace meeting brokered by district and security officials, a Meitei house in the Lalpani area was torched on Friday evening by miscreants, the police said.
Police said that the family occupying the house had managed to flee to safety and that no injuries or casualties were reported. The Lalpani area of Jiribam is dominated by the Bengali community with a few Meitei households.
Jiribam’s Superintendent of Police M. Pradip Singh told The Hindu, “A case will be registered for arson in the matter. It appears to be an attempt to derail peace processes being attempted in Jiribam.”
“Given the location, it is very unlikely that any of the parties that signed the peace pact were involved,” a source said.
Peace meeting
On Thursday, the SP along with the district administration, the Central Reserve Police Force, and the Assam Rifles had brokered a peace meeting between the Meitei and Hmar communities staying in Jiribam. The meeting was held in neighbouring Assam’s Cachar district.
As per the meeting resolution signed by civil society groups from the Meitei and Hmar communities, both sides had agreed to try their best to prevent arson and firing incidents and cooperate with all security forces operating in Jiribam.
In June, Jiribam had become the latest site of the State’s continuing ethnic conflict between the valley-based Meitei community and the hills-based Scheduled Tribe Kuki-Zo group of communities, which includes the Hmar community.
After the bodies of a Kuki-Zo man and a Meitei man were found in Jiribam district within weeks of each other, the district had seen a spate of arson and firing incidents, one of which had led to the death of a CRPF constable on July 14. Till June, the district had largely remained peaceful.
The spate of arson that started in Jiribam on June 6 had led to the displacement of over 2,000 people from both Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in the district.
In fact, both the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities are in the minority in Jiribam, with Bengali Hindus and Muslims comprising the majority of the population. Among the Kuki-Zo communities, Jiribam has a higher proportion of Hmar people.
At the most recent peace meeting between Meiteis and Hmars of Jiribam, representatives of other Kuki-Zo tribes such as Paite, Thadou, and Mizo were also present.
