Five-year-old Tomthin and five-month-old Yaisana died together, instantly. For two weeks now, the bodies of the siblings have lain together, at a morgue in Imphal, awaiting “justice”.
That is what the family is demanding for the children, killed in a projectile attack in their sleep in Bishnupur. And that is what the protesters who have been taking to the streets every night in Imphal are asking for – the agitation putting Manipur back on the edge, days ahead of what would be the third anniversary of the start of the ongoing ethnic conflict in the state.
The rocket-propelled shell that killed Tomthin and Yaisana exploded in their room around 1 am on the intervening night of April 6-7, while they slept next to their mother Binita, at their grandparents’ home in Bishnupur’s Tronglaobi Awang Leikai village.
Binita, 37, who suffered splinter injuries, was in hospital till about a week ago, and has moved to her parents’ home in Imphal East to recuperate, away from the media glare.
The Manipur government handed over the probe to the NIA, and state Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam recently told reporters that five suspected cadres of the United Kuki National Army have been arrested and their role is being investigated. Earlier, police had recovered the launcher from which the shell was fired from the edge of the village, and so are also investigating the involvement of “local elements”.
With no clear answers, the family has resolved not to claim the bodies of the children till “justice is delivered”.
The Tronglaobi house where the shell exploded carries fresh plaster around the window, from which the projectile is believed to have entered the room. The room’s door opening into the house, which was damaged due to the impact, has been replaced as well. However, the walls and ceiling are pitted and scarred, a stark proof of what transpired a fortnight ago.
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Oinam Babuton, the paternal grandfather of the children and the owner of the house, talks about how delighted he and his wife were when Binita arrived for a visit with the children about a month before the incident. She works as a nurse at a private hospital in Guwahati and was on maternity leave after the birth of Yaisana.
Says Babuton, 70: “We were so happy. As my grandson had grown up outside Manipur, he couldn’t speak the language and we would communicate with signs. But having spent a month here, and a lot of time around children his age, he had picked up a bit of our language.”
Babuton’s elder son and the children’s father, Oinam Mangalsana, is a BSF jawan posted in Bihar’s Kishangaj, and was away when the incident happened.
Babuton’s younger son lives with his parents in the village and does farming or drives an e-rickshaw for a living.
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The plan was for Binita and the children to stay till the end of May, and leave after ceremonies for Yaisana such as rice-feeding and ear-piercing, Babuton says.
It was a mistake, the 70-year-old adds, for them to believe the area was now “safe”, enough for the children to come visit.
A foothill village, Tronglaobi in Meitei-dominated Bishnupur lies close to National Highway-2 and the hills of Churachandpur, where the majority of the population is Kuki-Zo. “Fringe areas” such as these were hotspots of gunfight and violence in the earlier days of the Meitei-Kuki conflict, but in recent days, with the state settling into relative calm, it was easy to believe peace had returned.
Babuton says: “Earlier, in 2023, we would hear a lot of firing and bombs and volunteers would be on duty at night to protect the village. A lot of Army and other security forces moved into the area, and a CRPF camp continues to be stationed nearby. But President’s Rule came, and then a new BJP government, so we trusted them (the officials), and thought it was safe.”
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“We were very wrong to trust the security forces,” he adds.
About his son and daughter-in-law, Babuton says: “I don’t have words to describe their condition. Their children were snatched from their laps.”
Mangalsana, who rushed home after the incident, hasn’t rejoined work and is staying with Binita at her parents’ home.
The incident and the protests it has provoked are the biggest challenge of his short tenure for Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh, who took over on February 4 amid much promise.
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He has promised that the state government is trying to arrange government jobs within Manipur for Binita and Mangalsana so that the two can live together. Due to their respective jobs, they have barely lived together since they got married eight years ago.
