Murders most foul

Pradip Phanjoubam 
AFTER a week of uncertainty and tension following the barbaric murder of Kasom Khullen subdivisional officer Thingnam Kishan and two of his staff, driver A Rajen Sharma and Y Token, by assailants, who everybody knew were suspects but never were able to, with justification, pinpoint the allegation, the first stage of the matter has somewhat been sealed.
The NSCN(IM) has now owned up that one of its cadres, Lt-Col H Nighshen, was behind the unspeakable crime, albeit without the authorisation of his higher authorities.
The sensitivity to public pressure deserves appreciation, so too the organisation’s courage to own up to the crime. However, just this much concession cannot exonerate it. It must now demonstrate that it is capable of putting its worth where its mouth is. It had promised penalty to any of its cadres found involved in savagery, now it is up to the organisation to show it meant what it pledged it would do as a matter of principle. Only this would win it some degree of redemption in the eyes of the people, especially the Meiteis whom the killers seem so vindictively to have targeted.
It is worth recall that six people, including the SDO, were abducted. Of them, three were Meiteis and the rest  Tangkhuls. The three Meiteis were butchered and the three Tangkhuls were let off. The murderers will need extremely strong justification to prove there was nothing communal about the crime. Again, the victims were left in the vicinity of Taphou Kuki village, further adding to the sense of a very sinister intrigue being played out.
From the organisational perspective too, the NSCN(IM) cannot possibly treat the matter lightly even if it comes to consider the killings are with justification. For one, as per its own admission, the killings had no official sanction of the organisation. The obvious implication is, this particular unit which was involved in the crime, or perhaps there are more such units, seems to have been operating independently of any centralised authority of the organisation.
If this is the case, apart from the danger it poses to the general public, it also does not reflect well on the organisational health of the NSCN(IM). The adverse consequences of the withering away of central authority in a militaristic organisation needs no further convincing, at least in Manipur which has witnessed some underground organisations splinter into dozens of armed bands.
Even if the NSCN(IM) does what is expected of it and punishes the killer and his accomplices fittingly, there is much more to be pursued in the case. One of these has to do with the allegation that the deputy commissioner of Ukhhrul  district has always hobnobbed with the killers.
This allegation comes from beyond the grave. According to what the bereaved wife of Kishan told the media, her late husband had always been unhappy about his immediate boss’s conduct on this count.
This allegation is to be seen against the background that the vehicle in which the three murdered men, together with three more were travelling had been commandeered on 13 February by their assailants from the gate of the Ukhrul DC ’s office at Ukhrul immediately after they attended a meeting which the latter had called.
The DC as well as the district superintendent of police, who did not report the matter, has since been suspended from service pending an enquiry. The DC, instead, quickly went on leave the next day, even as the murdered officer and staff were still missing.
From circumstantial evidence, it also does seem there was plenty of bad blood generated in the distribution of work charges under the Central government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
The picture that comes across from the information so far is that of an upright officer walking into a corruption den and paying the ultimate price for trying to mediate and intervene in a high-stakes game of plundering official booty. The matter needs focused investigation for, as the saying goes, dead men tell no tales.
There is also ambiguity in the government of India’s truce with the NSCN(IM). In the last list of banned organisations New Delhi published mid-last year, the organisation, together with a number of Kuki underground groups, were conspicuously missing.
Moreover, the NSCN(IM) truce also officially exists only in Nagaland. As to how all this would translate in legal terms is a matter of bewilderment and outrage for the lay public. The apprehension is also that this ambiguity would be used to put up a smokescreen behind which the murderers and their accomplices, including government officials, are allowed to slip away. This has happened before.
The savagery of the murder would also appal anybody except pathological killers. The SDO and his two staff were blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs and their faces and heads bludgeoned with a spade into total disfigurement.
Kishan’s death, especially, has shocked most. He combined the rare values of academic brilliance and a strong commitment to society and justice.
When he decided to join the Manipur Civil Service, having cleared the last long and torturous recruitment process, he was already a lecturer of English literature in the DM College of Arts, and also had an appointment letter to join Manipur University’s English department as a lecturer. Earlier still, he was lecturer of English on an ad hoc basis in Shyamlal College, University of Delhi.
He had also shown extraordinary commitment to social reform and justice exhibiting immense activist instinct in bringing out a quarterly journal, Alternative Perspective, which intellectually addressed the many unsettled issues faced by Manipur and the North-east.

(The author is editor of Imphal Free Press.)