Home Ministry deploys additional 10 companies of Central force in Manipur

way2barak, Aug 6 :As over three month long ethnic violence continued in Manipur, the Union Home Ministry (MHA) has deployed additional ten companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) in the northeastern state, officials said here on Sunday.

A senior police official said that ten companies (around 900 personnel and some officers) of CAPF – CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB – arrived in Imphal on Saturday night and they would be deployed in different districts.

After the ethnic violence broke out in Manipur on May 3, the Defence Ministry and the MHA have deployed over 40,000 Army, Assam Rifles and various CAPF.

Both the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), an umbrella body of the Meitei community and the leading tribal organisations — Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) and Kuki Inpi Manipur (KIM) – have been accusing that the state armed and police forces and a section of central forces are playing partisan role.

Meanwhile, some women organisations are creating obstacles for independent operations of the security forces and they are often putting road blockades, delaying the movement of the CAPF and the state forces.

Some television channels in northeast are telecasting footage of women seeking identity of the CAPF jawans.

A Manipur police control statement said that the security forces so far recovered 1195 looted arms and 14,322 various types of ammunition from across the state.

Various reports, political parties claimed that during the ethnic riots, which broke out in Manipur on May 3, over 4,000 diverse types of sophisticated arms and lakhs of different types of ammunition were looted from the police stations and police outposts by the mobs, attackers and militants.

On August 3, in a fresh incident a mob ransacked Keirenphabi Police outpost and Thangalawai Police outposts of Manipur Armed Police’s 2nd Battalion in Bishnupur and took away a huge cache of arms and ammunition.

Reports said that the mob looted sophisticated weapons, including AK and ‘Ghatak’ series of assault rifles, many self-loading rifles and over 19,000 bullets of different calibres.

The mob, comprising men and women, also attempted to snatch arms and ammunition from Heingang police station and Singjamei police station in the same district but security forces repelled them.

Director General of Manipur Police Rajiv Singh said that Police under the supervision of an Inspector General of Police-level officer are undertaking a high-level probe into the loot of a large amount of arms and ammunition from the two police outposts.