Autopsy report of Manipur family says victims were shot multiple times before bodies dumped in river

The report said that one of the victims, a 3-year-old boy, had a bullet wound on his chin and his right eye was “missing”.

The autopsy report of three of the six members of a Meitei family who were allegedly abducted by armed militants during an encounter with security forces in Jiribam district of Manipur on November 11, 2024 reveals that they were shot multiple times before their bodies were dumped in a river.

The report said that one of the victims, a 3-year-old boy, had a bullet wound on his chin and his right eye was “missing”. The body had several lacerations, indicating injuries by a blunt object, and was infested with maggots when brought for post mortem, the report said.

After the family was abducted by armed militants, their highly decomposed bodies were found floating in a river in Lakhipur district in neighbouring Assam on different days — November 15, November 17 and November 18.

A photograph of the victims, who were said to be missing, where they were seen huddled together in a forested area circulated on social media on November 12, 2024, confirming the abductions.

The photograph was first posted on Facebook and police or the investigating agencies are yet to reveal who the account belonged to. The probe was handed over to the National Investigation Agency on November 18, 2024. An NIA team visited Jiribam last week.

The autopsies were done at Silchar Medical College in Assam.

The boy’s mother had two bullet wounds on her back, while his grandmother suffered five bullet wounds and the bodies were in a highly decomposed state.

The victims, who were abducted by armed militants on November 11, 2024 during an encounter with the Central Reserve Police Force and the police in Jiribam district, were likely killed the same day.

A resolution passed by the ruling MLAs in Manipur on November 18, 2024 called for “mass operations against the Kuki militants” responsible for the killing of the innocent women and children in Jiribam within seven days.

The militants are yet to be identified and arrested by the agencies.

A police official said that around 35 armed militants, split in a group of three attacked the CRPF camp and adjacent Borobekra police station in Jiribam as they came looking for “Meitei people”.

Several Meitei families had taken shelter in the precincts of the camp and the police station since June when violence extended to the area the first time after ethnic violence erupted in the State on May 3, 2023. Ten armed militants were killed in “retaliatory fire” by the CRPF, police said.

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The area had been on an edge since November 7, 2024 when armed miscreants captured, and burned a tribal Hmar woman to death apart from torching at least a dozen houses. Curfew and Internet ban has been imposed in Jiribam for the past one week.

Presently, 288 companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF), around 29,000 personnel are deployed in the State, other than the State police, Army and the Assam Rifles.

As many as 258 people have been killed in the ethnic violence between the Meitei people who live in the valley and the tribal Kuki-Zo-Hmar people in the hills. In the recent spell of violence since November 7, 2024, at least 22 people have been killed.

Published - November 24, 2024 07:40 pm IST