- The Manipur chief minister’s role in the ongoing ethnic violence in his state will likely come under scrutiny with allegations suggesting he supported the use of lethally destructive ammunition – (51 mm mortar bombs)– in parts of the state last year.
- The violence has still not been brought under control after over a year of strife with no attempts at meaningful rapprochement between Meiteis and Kuki-Zos. Prime Minister Modi has not visited the state since the violence began on May 3, 2023 and did not even campaign there in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
- At least 226 people, as per government data, have been killed in the ‘double engine’ state since the violence began.
New Delhi: The Commission of Inquiry set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs to inquire into the Manipur violence has been provided with an audio file – claimed to be a recording of chief minister N. Biren Singh – which, if correct, would be evidence of official complicity in the ongoing civil war that has been raging in the state since May 3, 2023.
The Wire was informed by the purported maker/s of the 48-minute recording that it was done in person at a meeting where the chief minister unmistakably indicated his partisan complicity in the ongoing violence. The sources, claiming anonymity on account of the threat to personal safety, told The Wire that this material has also been submitted to the Commission – along with an affidavit attesting to its authenticity from the person/s who made the recording at the chief minister’s official residence –and that protection and anonymity has been sought from the Commission as well.
The official death toll as of May 2024 is 226 with another 39 missing while around 60,000 people belonging to both the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities are still displaced and unable to return to their homes. Despite official assurances, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s governments, both in the state and in Delhi, have failed to end the bloodshed. More importantly, they have done little to bridge the gulf between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities.
The statements as recorded are communally divisive and inflammatory and raise fundamental concerns about the ruling dispensation in the violence torn state. It suggests that the ruling dispensation is partisan and bent upon sharpening the existing polarisation between Meitei and Kuki instead of healing it.
The Wire obtained a copy of the recording from a well-placed source in July and has transcribed and translated its contents. The Wire had, however, refrained from publication until it was told that the same has been placed on the record of the official Commission of Inquiry set up under the law.
On August 7, the Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO) shared a transcript of short excerpts of the recording in a press release, and these were subsequently amplified by several social media handles. The same night, the Manipur government issued a statement denying the voice heard was that of Biren Singh and calling the recording “doctored”:
“It has come to [the] notice of [the] Government that an audio recording, falsely claiming to be that of the Hon’ble Chief Minister, Manipur is being circulated on social media platforms. This doctored audio is a malicious attempt by certain sections to incite communal violence or to derail the process of peace that has been initiated at multiple levels.”
While The Wire is unable to independently establish that the person heard speaking on the recording about the violence in Manipur is indeed Biren Singh, we have confirmed the date, subject and contents of this meeting with some of the participants, none of whom was willing to be identified because of fears for their safety. Some persons claiming to have been participants at the meeting assert that the voice is indeed of chief minister Biren Singh and that he did say all the things in the recording in their presence.
Some of these persons were also able to confirm to The Wire that the full audio clip has been submitted to the Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice (Retd) Ajai Lamba, a former chief justice of the Gauhati high court.
The Commission was set up by a notification of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on June 4, 2023.
Given the compelling public interest involved in the contents of this recording – both for the people of Manipur and the rest of India – The Wire is placing key excerpts in the public domain. While we understand the complete recording and transcript are now part of the records of the Commission, we are withholding some parts of the audio for the moment as they might adversely affect the security of individuals in the state, and may further accentuate tension in the wider region.
The recording is in Meiteilon with some sentences in Hindi. For the benefit of readers outside Manipur, we are also providing an English translation that we had commissioned from a native speaker of Meiteilon.
The recording raises a key question about Biren Singh’s role as chief minister in the face of the ethnic violence between Meiteis and Kukis: was he performing his constitutional duty of trying to bring peace to the beleaguered state or was he making efforts to burnish his credentials as a leader of the Meiteis, even if this meant torpedoing attempts to bring the communities together?
His acts of omission and commission have exacted a heavy price from the people of his state across communities. On August 1, 2024, Singh told the state assembly that 226 people had died in the ethnic conflict since May 2023, and that 39 persons are still missing. He said 11,133 houses were set on fire, and 11,892 cases have been registered in connection with the violence. Singh added that as of now, 59,414 people are still in relief camps. He said agricultural land belonging to 5,554 persons was also affected.
The recording we are publishing today captures the voice alleged to be of the chief minister mocking Union home minister Amit Shah, discussing the use of “bombs” in the state, and bragging about defying Shah’s orders and shielding those who took thousands of lethal weapons from state police armouries.
‘Arre, tum bomb marta hai?’, Amit Shah asked
Addressing Parliament last August in the face of criticism of the government’s handling of the Manipur crisis, Amit Shah had vehemently defended Biren Singh, saying that the chief minister was “cooperating” with the Union to calm the ethnic conflict in the state.
Accusing the Opposition of ‘playing politics’ over Manipur, Shah, on August 9, 2023, expressed confidence in the party’s ‘double-engine sarkar’ in the state, and said:
“…We changed the DGP, they accepted the Centre’s DGP. We changed the chief secretary, they accepted the chief secretary we sent. The need to change a chief minister arises when he doesn’t cooperate. But here the chief minister is cooperating.”
But the audio clip suggests otherwise.
Speaking in Hindi and Meiteilon, the purported voice of Singh can be heard saying:
“When Amit Shah came here, he asked:
‘Biren ji!’
‘Haan sir!’
‘Arre! Tum bomb marta hai?’ [laughter in the background]
All heard you see! ‘Bomb marta hai?’ Means, from that day onwards, he instructed [me] to stop using bombs. Mat marna, (You are using bombs? Don’t use them). ‘Bombs mat use karna’, he instructed [us] by summoning the DG [DGP] and all.
After he [Shah] left, I told them; Hoi! Chupke se karna hai, open nahi karna hai (It should be used covertly, not openly.) If you don’t trust me, check with the commandos in the frontline.”
The reference is presumably to Amit Shah’s three-day visit to Manipur starting May 20, 2023. The state’s DGP at the time was P. Doungel, a 1987 batch IPS officer from the state cadre. Doungel belongs to the Kuki community.
Soon after Shah’s visit though, in June 2023, Doungel was made Officer on Special Duty (Home), a post especially created for him by the Biren Singh government to make way for a new DGP, Rajiv Singh.
The Wire tried reaching out to Doungel, who has since retired from service. This story will be updated when we are able to contact him.
However, a senior IPS officer still in service at Imphal vehemently denied that any senior officer had instructed commandos to use “bombs” in the Kuki areas.
“We saw the use of bombs, like 51 mm mortar bombs, etc. only after arms were looted by the mob from the police armoury,” the officer told The Wire.
51 mm mortar bombs have a range of about 900 metres and explode immediately on contact; they can damage houses, vehicles and even kill.
The senior officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “After 2-3 days of the ethnic conflict, the home department was instructed to give all information to the chief minister; we followed that informal order. So it was him as the home minister who was giving instructions directly to those at the front.”
Other evidence of the use of “bombs”
A number of press releases issued by the Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) after Shah’s visit last year also mentioned the use of 51 mm mortar bombs on Kuki villages. On June 22, 2023, an ITLF press release claimed that some “unknown miscreants” used “a highly intensive bomb” in the Kwakta area to destroy a bridge “in an attempt to cut off the road that goes to Lamka (Churachandpur)”.
In June 2023, a joint team of Assam Rifles and state police recovered one 51 mm mortar bomb from the Imphal East district during a search operation. More such cases were reported in coming months.
On August 31 2023, another mention was made by the ITLF about “bombs” being used. “Meitei militants have lately been pounding tribal areas with mortar shells stolen from police stations and armouries, and this is leading to tribal casualties.”
The shelling of Meitei villages by Kuki militants using “bombs” was also reported by local media last year. In September 2023, the Imphal Free Press said an Improvised Electronic Device (IED) suspected to have been dropped from a drone by Kuki militants was found near Moirang in Bishnupur district. “Fortunately, the device did not detonate”.
Shielding looters of arms?
In the audio clip, the voice claimed as the CM’s can be heard saying that he had shielded Meitei “village guards” who had “snatched” thousands of arms from the state police armoury from arrest.
Also it is heard asking
“The 4000/5000 guns…who has got arrested? Till now, about 4,000-5000 guns have been snatched but who has been arrested at all? They have not arrested the CM…if they arrest, it, the CM, will be the first. It is me who will be arrested for the snatching away of the 4000-5000 guns.”
Biren Singh is also the state home minister and thereby head of the state police, and the voice claimed to be his can be heard in the recording saying that if anyone gets arrested (by central forces), he would “put in a word” for their release “when things calm down”:
“Any way, we will see from our side and you also do your part from your side. Do not let yourself get arrested. Meaning, don’t go when summoned. Buy some time. When things calm down, I will put in a word…”
With widespread coverage in the national and international media about the huge cache of arms and ammunition looted from the state armoury during the strife, pressure on the state administration to seize them, particularly in the run-up to the general election, led to the extraordinary situation of the government setting up boxes across the valley areas, urging those who had taken weapons from police armouries to return them. The plea came with a tacit assurance from the state administration that no action would be taken against anyone returning arms.
According to reliable sources at the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), soon after the state armoury was looted, home minister Shah held a “video conference with the chief minister in the presence of top MHA and state government officials and at least one minister, L. Sushindro Yaima.”
“The HM was very strict with the chief minister in that video conference; HM had categorically told him that if he doesn’t recover the arms soon, it could affect his political career. That threat was made to him in front of everyone present in that meeting,” said the source.
Despite Shah’s threat, the chief minister has not been able to recover the weapons. According to Singh’s statement in March 2024, the Manipur state administration, has so far recovered only 1,757 arms and 22,707 rounds of ammunition from approximately 5,600 arms and 6.5 lakh rounds of ammunition looted from state police armouries.
In the same audio clip, the speaker can be heard saying that he would ensure arms supply, most likely to “village guards”, through the state assembly and also that if the state police arrest anyone, he “will handle it”:
“Nowadays, there is a charge against me. The charge on me is that I am allowing moving around vehicles fully armed in large numbers. Don’t you see it all around? Where is the government then? Does the government exist? It is one thing to do so in the frontline, in the battleground. Today there was a shooting in…No one says a word. There in the hills…But right here if such things…(unclear)…
Wait…let the AG come (unclear)…from the assembly….let’s see how we can give them. We are playing for time…if we don’t now, they will say Biren has allowed commandos to have them taken away…that is why they have taken away power. They have removed me from being unified chair command [audible smirk]. He is giving away arms…he is rallying commandos and others (unclear)…arrest by the police is okay…I will handle that.”
Biren Singh was removed from chairmanship of the Unified Command on May 31, 2023, by an order of the Manipur governor.
Some arrests were carried out by Union government agencies
Between September 2023 and March 2024, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) carried out four sensational arrests in the state which also included the arrest of three top leaders of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF)’s Pambei faction in Imphal; all of them were accused of aiding and abetting the violence against the Kukis in a case (23/2023) registered in Delhi that probes a ‘transnational conspiracy’ to destabilise the state.
However, the arrest of only individuals from the Meitei community kicked up an uproar among Meitei civil society bodies, leading to a series of shutdowns in the valley areas. Demands were made on the chief minister to put a stop to these arrests. This March, Biren Singh was seen making appeals to the Centre for the release of the three UNLF (P) leaders who had just been arrested by the NIA. Interestingly, just months before, in November 2023, Amit Shah had signed a ‘historic’ peace accord with the group in New Delhi.
In September 2023, the NIA arrested one Moirangthem Anand Singh as soon as he was granted bail by a local court in Imphal in another case. A state police team had arrested Anand Singh along with four others on the charge of carrying arms in a vehicle apparently dressed up in police uniform. Those arrests also saw a massive protest by civil society bodies, particularly by the Meira Paibi, members of which were reportedly present at the local court which soon granted them bail. However, before he was released by the state police, an NIA team present in Imphal rearrested Anand Singh and airlifted him to Delhi the same day.
In May 2024, Moirangthem Anand Singh was named by the NIA in a chargesheet filed before a special court in Guwahati as a ‘trained cadre’ of the banned People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Manipur; the central agency accused him of imparting arms training to Meitei youth at a public park in Imphal in the thick of the ethnic strife.
Leadership struggle
In June, when the conflict couldn’t be contained, the clamour for Biren Singh’s removal had come from the Kukis and Opposition parties of Manipur. Towards the end of June, media reports said Singh would likely resign. On June 30 though, after a dramatic turn of events, things changed. A resignation letter purportedly written by Singh was torn in front of local media by a member of the Meira Paibi, followed by women blocking his car from going towards the governor’s residence. Singh immediately reassured his supporters that he would not resign at that “crucial juncture”.
Though Biren Singh continued to hold onto his office, the need for his removal in order to bring peace in the state became a much-talked about point within the state BJP and the party’s ideological fount, the RSS, towards the end of 2023. Several delegations have since made representations to national leaders of the RSS and to BJP president J.P. Nadda about the need for a change. The BJP’s dismal performance in the 2024 general elections, particularly in Manipur where the Congress wrested both Lok Sabha seats from the party and its ally, the Naga People’s Front (NPF), has added more heft to that demand.
Biren Singh has been aware of these goings-on in Delhi and Imphal. In the audio recording, the voice said to be that of Biren Singh can be heard trying to establish his credentials as the leader of the majority community, who would not even mind “shooting bombs” at the Kukis:
“…Kukis will scold me, abuse me…why won’t they…? I have destroyed a lot…the seizures…so why wont they abuse me? But amongst ourselves…don’t they see how I am looking at things? Power has been taken away from me.
Their [Kuki] casualty is a bit high. Around 300 Kukis have died. The lungi wearing ones from the other side [Myanmar] in the beginning. They are still there. But many of them retreated after the Indian Army came in large numbers. At that time I was very disappointed. I was very angry that they – who were kept under shelter by the [Meitei] King – they started coming down to the valley and attacked. I am deeply affected, it seared me so much…
I shouldn’t be saying this but let the gods be witness, if I were not here on this seat, I swear, if I were not on this seat, if I was not CM, I would have shelled bombs. I am saying very clearly, bomb!”
Soon after the June 2024 poll results, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat jumped in and asked the Modi government to act on Manipur. The Wire has earlier reported that the state unit of the RSS has even named its choice for the chief minister’s post while a section of BJP leaders from the Northeast have made a representation with Nadda on behalf of a minister in the Biren Singh government.
In the just-concluded budget session of Parliament, the Outer Manipur MP Alfred K Arthur also demanded the ouster of Biren Singh so that peace could be ushered in the state.
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The Wire has sent the following questions to the chief minister:
A) Did you at any point instruct state police commandos last year to defy Amit Shah’s orders not to use bombs (including 51 mm mortar bombs) in the Kuki areas and use them instead covertly?
B) Did you start giving instructions to the commandos directly after 2-3 days of the ethnic conflict last year, bypassing the DGP and other senior IPS officials?
C) Did you at any point say at your office last year that you ensured that no looter of arms from the state police stations be arrested?
D) Did you at any point say that you will ensure supply of arms to unauthorised people through the state assembly?
E) Did you at any time say that had you not been the chief minister, you would have been shooting bombs at Kukis?
The story will be updated when he responds.