A state is judged by how it protects those who protect it. When the uniform of India is attacked for doing its lawful duty, it is not merely an attack on a force. It is an attack on the Constitution, on the rule of law, and on every law-abiding citizen.
The incident at Kangpokpi, where a team of the CRPF CoBRA – one of India’s most elite and decorated anti-extremist forces – was attacked and obstructed by the Kukis for carrying out the lawful arrest of six Kuki Refugee armed terrorists identified as cross-border infiltrators from Myanmar, is a defining moment that must be understood beyond a local law-and-order report.
A Dangerous Precedent
The facts as reported are stark. Acting on intelligence, Indian Security Forces apprehended six Kuki Refugee terrorists in possession of illegal arms, who are part of trans-border armed networks operating in the border hill areas of Manipur and presently being sheltered at Kangpokpi District by the Kuki SoO militants and Kuki CSOs. In any sovereign nation, this is a routine, lawful, and necessary action.
What followed was not routine. A mobilized group of Kuki mob and miscreants, operating under the banner of ethnic solidarity, laid siege to the security forces, pelted stones and petrol bombs at them, blocked their movement by illegally digging up the National Highways, and attempted to forcibly secure the release of the arrested Kuki Refugee Narco-terrorists.
Let us be intellectually precise about what this means. This is not protest. This is obstruction of justice under Section 221 of the BNS. This is assault on public servants under Section 132. This is an attempt to place an armed group above the law. When the Kuki community decides that its armed Refugee Narco-terrorists from Burma cannot be arrested by India, it is declaring that India has no jurisdiction over it.
The CoBRA does not work for a community. It works for the Constitution of India.
From Unrest in Myanmar to Unrest in Manipur
The crisis in Manipur cannot be isolated from the collapse of order in Myanmar.
For years, the Chin-Kuki-Zo kinship has been exploiting as narco-armed networks to create a seamless corridor of unrest: poppy cultivation in the remote hills of Myanmar and Manipur, drug processing in makeshift labs, arms smuggling from the Golden Triangle, and the use of deforested hill tracts for illegal settlements.
It is a documented fact by the Government of India, the Narcotics Control Bureau, and multiple security assessments that Manipur has become a major hub for drug trafficking and illegal poppy cultivation by the Kuki community, with a sharp rise coinciding with the influx of undocumented Kuki Refugee migrants from Myanmar after the 2021 military coup. This is unfortunately a bitter truth of the Kuki community. The vast majority of Kukis are war- mongering illegal nomads, drug manufacturers/ smugglers and peddlers, and cannibals. The armed Kuki SoO groups and narco-networks represent them leading Manipur into chaos and destruction.
These networks care neither for human life, nor for the future of their own community, nor for the country, nor for the Constitution, nor for Christian values they profess. They operate on a business model of violence. They thrive when there is unrest. They survive when the state is weak.
Today the demand is for a separate “Kukiland” within Manipur, carved out of the ancestral lands of the Naga ancestral territories from time immemorial. The question every serious political observer must ask, lawfully and logically, is: if the principle is accepted that Kuki armed groups under SoO, which openly violates ground rules by continuing to hold illegal arms, extort on highways, and attack security forces, can demand a political entity, what stops the demand from escalating tomorrow to a separate country? Unrest exported from Myanmar will not create peace in Manipur. It will replicate the same failed model in Manipur and in India.
The Tragedy of a Misled Generation
Biblically, emotionally, and socially, the greatest victims of this model are not the security forces. The greatest victims are the innocent indigenous people of Manipur.
Looking at the faces of the Kuki Refugee Narco-terrorists who take up illegal guns against the indigenous people of Manipur. Many are child soldiers, teenagers and youths in their early twenties. They are brainwashed into becoming Narco-terrorists by their own community. They are the soldiers of narco-economy that has normalized drug addiction, of a war economy that pays more for holding a gun than for tilling a field, and of a leadership vacuum that tells them that holding an AK rifle makes them a Kuki freedom fighter.
What future do they have? A young man who spends five years in a jungle camp guarding poppy fields and extorting trucks on the highway has no education, no skill, no employable future. He becomes dependent on the very leaders and community who sent him there. He becomes addicted, not just to drugs, but to a culture of impunity, killings and terrorizing innocent indigenous people of other communities.
Proverbs 1:10-16 warns: “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause… My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.”
A true leader builds schools, not narco-terrorist camps. A true leader cultivates paddy to feed his people, not poppy to poison the nation.
An honorable and God-fearing community does not survive on drugs, illegal arms, and war against its neighbors. It does not wage unprovoked war and it does not attempt to forcibly usurp and occupy the ancestral lands of other communities – lands that never belonged to them, do not belong to them, and will never belong to them.
Land ownership is not decided by narco-money, illegal guns, or engineered influx. It is decided by ancestry, history, and truth. No amount of violence and false claims can turn encroachment into ownership.
The Uncompromising Demand
The solution cannot be appeasement. It must be the firm, fair, and unflinching application of law.
1. Lawfully and Judiciously: All SoO ground rules must be enforced without exception. Any Kuki group that attacks security forces, holds illegal sophisticated arms beyond designated camps, engages in extortion on national highways, or protects narco-operations must be declared in violation of SoO and dealt with under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and NDPS Act.
2. Historically and Factually: The Government of India must flush out all the Kuki Refugees from the borders of Manipur and other states of Northeast. Official and proper Biometric registration and verification of all undocumented Kuki entrants from Myanmar on humanitarian grounds must be done strictly on legal basis. Humanity demands we shelter refugees. Sovereignty demands we identify them and prevent them from being militarized.
3. Politically and Morally: There can be no political talks under the shadow of illegal guns and narcotics. No demand for Kukiland or any other territorial entity can be entertained when it includes Naga ancestral lands and when it is backed by armed coercion. The Nagas have made it abundantly clear through UNC and all CSOs that Naga territory is non-negotiable.
4. Spiritually and Socially: The Church, the village chiefs, and the mothers of the Kuki community must rise to save their own youths. They must demand that their sons come home, lay down illegal arms, and join the mainstream of education and employment.
The Indian Security Forces, whether CRPF, CoBRA, Assam Rifles, or Manipur Police must ensure impartiality by abiding the laws of the land in letter and in spirit – without favour and prejudice. They are supposed to be the last line between anarchy and order. When they are attacked for arresting armed Kuki Refugee Narco-terrorists, all the indigenous communities of Manipur and citizens of India must condemn it openly, loudly, and without hypocrisy.
The Constitution does not belong to one community. It belongs to all. And it must be defended against all who challenge it, irrespective of name, community, or cause.
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
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Michael Meiphami Shaiza is Co-incharge of BJP Manipur State Political Programmes and Meetings and President of Ukhrul-based NGO Ecological Rehabilitators’ Association (ERA).
(Views expressed are writers’ own and do not, in whatsoever manner, reflect that of Ukhrul Now)
