By IANS
New Delhi : Rivalry between three outlawed ethnic groups in Manipur has touched the national capital as the gruesome killing of a top Kuki leader here Monday showed, police officials say.
K. Hang Shing, ‘commander-in-chief’ of Manipur’s Kuki Revolutionary Army (KRA), was found murdered in his brother’s Srinivaspuri home in south Delhi in the early hours Monday.
“Initial investigation clearly points out that K. Hang Shing was bludgeoned to death by some members belonging to another outlawed outfit based in Manipur,” a senior Delhi Police official told IANS.
“The assailants, six in number, were aware of Shing’s whereabouts in the city. It seems that they hatched the conspiracy to settle personal scores,” he added.
Police are also probing the role of some of Shing’s own group members who could have connived with rival outfits.
Shing, 35, had come to the city some 20 days ago for medical treatment.
The KRA, which is part of a faction of Kuki outfits called United People’s Front, is said to be responsible for the kidnapping of a number of bureaucrats in Manipur.
Shing’s younger brother Satminthang had told police that around eight or nine people with pistols barged into their house while he and his brother were watching television with their three friends.
“They tied our hands and feet and asked us to lie on the floor, facing the floor. They took Shing to the adjoining room. The assailants then increased the television volume to its maximum and killed him,” Satminthang told police adding that he somehow managed to untie his legs and asked their landlord on the second floor for help.
Shing was rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where he was declared brought dead.
Satminthang, a second year BA (Hons) student at PGDAV College in south Delhi, told police that the assailants claimed to be from the Manipuri ‘Combined Commando Force’.
The police official said they were asking their colleagues in Manipur, “but so far we have no knowledge about the existence of such a group”.
“It is the first time that a prominent member of an ethnic group has been killed in the capital by rivals. Their fighting had always remained confined to the northeastern states till now,” he said.
The rivalry among the ethnic groups — Meiteis, Nagas and Kukis — in Manipur is not new. The Meitei insurgents’ prime objective is to free their pre-British territorial boundary from “Indian occupation”, while the Naga insurgents support the demand for a sovereign ‘Nagalim’ (Greater Nagaland).
The Kukis, who live side by side with the Nagas, have often demanded a separate Kukiland, with support from the Kuki National Organisation and Kuki National Army, insurgent groups in Myanmar across the Manipur border.