ON 13 May, 20 Naga civilians were abducted by Kuki militant groups from Leilon Vaiphei and Sapermaina villages in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district. Fourteen hostages were released on 15 May. When the bodies of the remaining six were recovered on 10 June, they were mutilated and dismembered.
According to the United Naga Council (UNC) and memoranda cited in this article, the perpetrators were members of the Kuki National Front-President (KNF-P), a group that operates under a government ceasefire agreement.
This is not an isolated atrocity. It is part of a pattern that has killed at least 260 people and displaced 50,000 to 60,000 since May 2023.
The conflict that erupted on 3 May 2023, initially between Meitei and Kuki communities, has since evolved into a multilayered crisis affecting other communities, including the Nagas.
Also Read: The Horror of May 13, 2026
Naga communities, which had largely maintained neutrality throughout the conflict, have nevertheless found themselves targets of abduction, extortion, and targeted killings.
The killing of three Thadou church leaders on 13 May 2026 was followed by the abduction of 20 Naga civilians. The Meitei community has suffered no less. The violence has exacted a heavy toll across multiple communities, including the massacre of six innocent Meitei family members at Jiribam, the abduction and murder of students Hijam Linthoingambi and Phijam Hemanjit, and the killing of two minor children in a blast at Tronglaobi.
These incidents represent only a portion of documented allegations. They are illustrative, not exhaustive.
The SoO Framework Has Failed
The Suspension of Operations (SoO) framework was designed to freeze the military capabilities of Kuki militant groups and bring them into political dialogue. It was initiated in 2008.
Today, according to the Foothills Naga Coordination Committee (FNCC), approximately 2,200 cadres from the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and the United People’s Front (UPF) live in 14 designated camps across Manipur. These groups, signatories to the SoO framework, were intended to freeze their military capabilities and enter political dialogue.
Instead of disarmament, the SoO regime has become what the FNCC calls “a sanctuary for armed criminals,” a cover for extortion, land encroachment, and the terrorising of civilians.
The violations are not abstract. Between 2023 and 2025 alone, the FNCC has documented extortion, assaults, kidnappings, and the burning of villages.
Also Read: Unresolved Justice Continues to Fuel the Cycle of Violence
The FNCC has explicitly stated that the KNO and UPF, both signatories to the SoO agreement, have “repeatedly violated” its terms. Despite these well-documented violations, the agreements have been renewed without accountability.
The Joint Monitoring Group (JMG), mandated to enforce the SoO ground rules, includes the very groups responsible for the violence.
The joint memorandum of July 2025 exposed this fundamental structural flaw: “The very groups responsible for violence are part of the mechanism meant to monitor it,” the memorandum read, adding that this “creates a conflict of interest and renders accountability impossible.”
Also Read: What the Death of Six Nagas Asks of India
According to the FNCC, despite a revised SoO agreement signed in September 2025 laying down a mechanism to monitor the activities of cadres, armed groups continue to operate with “sophisticated weapons under the silent watch of security forces.”
The FNCC has questioned “the role of the Indian Army and paramilitary units deployed in the area.”
Intimidation, harassment, and abduction of Naga civilians by armed SoO cadres are taking place in the presence of security forces. If the SoO agreement and revised ground rules cannot be enforced, the JMG must review the agreement or recommend its abrogation.
The Principle of Sequenced Disarmament
The rationale for sequenced disarmament is not punitive; it is practical and moral.
To restore peace in Manipur, the government must disarm the groups that started the violence and do so before asking community defence groups to lay down their weapons.
A peace process that treats all armed actors as equally culpable does not create symmetry; it creates impunity. It tells the community that suffered the first blow that their suffering is politically inconvenient to acknowledge. It tells those who initiated violence that their aggression will be met with the same response as the defence it provoked. This is not justice. It treats fundamentally different patterns of conduct as though they were identical, reducing the rule of law to a procedural formality that serves neither truth nor peace.
When communities perceive that the state is failing to distinguish between aggressors and those who took up arms in response to immediate threats, the legitimacy of the entire process collapses.
Also Read: Why the Kukis Failed to Coexist Peacefully with other indigenous Communities?
Sequencing based on accountability signals that the rule of law is not a blunt instrument but a calibrated mechanism that acknowledges how the violence began, who sustained it, and who stands most to gain from its continuation.
This is not about exempting any group from eventual disarmament. It is about establishing a moral and legal foundation that makes comprehensive disarmament possible.
A Cross-Community Consensus
The demand for accountability cuts across community lines. It is not a partisan demand from any single community but a shared call from Meitei, Naga, and Thadou civil society organisations.
On 3 July 2025, four organisations representing the Meitei, Naga, and Thadou communities, namely the Indigenous Peoples’ Forum Manipur, the Meitei Alliance, the Foothills Naga Coordination Committee (FNCC), and the Thadou Inpi Manipur (TIM), submitted a joint memorandum to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, urging the government not to renew the SoO agreements with Kuki extremist groups. They cited “repeated violations of the conditions and a failure to maintain law and order.”
The memorandum explicitly stated that the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and the United People’s Front (UPF), signatories to the SoO agreements, were responsible for inciting the violence that began on 3 May 2023 in Churachandpur, including arson in Torbung and Kanvai.
The Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), one of the largest Meitei civil society groups in Manipur, has been equally unequivocal. It rejected the extension of the SoO pact with what it called “Chin Kuki armed narco-terrorist groups,” alleging that the extension came despite “a series of terrorist and criminal acts” committed by these groups.
COCOMI further pointed out that the popularly elected Manipur government had, through a cabinet decision on 10 March 2023, unanimously resolved to abrogate the SoO agreement. It also noted that the Manipur Legislative Assembly passed a unanimous resolution on 29 February 2024, urging the Government of India to revoke the SoO. Despite this democratic mandate, the President’s Rule administration extended the agreement, an act COCOMI condemned as “illegitimate” and an “undemocratic and hegemonic imposition upon the indigenous people.”
On 18 April 2026, a coalition of Meitei civil society and student organisations, including the Delhi Meitei Coordinating Committee (DMCC), Manipur Students Association Delhi (MSAD), United Kakching Students (UNIKS), and the Manipur Innovative Youth Organisation (MAIYOND), submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, demanding the “complete and immediate disarmament of all Kuki militant groups, including those currently operating under the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreements.”
They also pressed for “an end to any form of state support, funding, protection, or use of Kuki militants as auxiliary forces.”
According to the memorandum, “Supporting any militant groups undermines public trust and fuels the ongoing conflict.” The memorandum further warned that “prolonged inaction has emboldened militant groups and deepened the crisis,” and that failure to act decisively “could further erode public confidence in governance and security institutions.”
The Meitei Heritage Society, in a 3 January 2026 memorandum to the Prime Minister, flagged concerns over foreign outreach by Chin Kuki Zo groups, warning that such actions could undermine India’s sovereignty and national security. It urged the government to “re-examine SoO agreements with Chin Kuki Zo militant groups” and pursue a “permanent, just and lawful solution to the Manipur crisis that protects all indigenous communities and preserves Manipur and India’s territorial integrity.”
Most recently, following the Kuki Zo Council’s public apology for the killing of six Naga hostages, the Meitei Alliance, a global umbrella body of civil society organisations, issued a powerful statement: “If established through investigation, these acts would rank among the most inhuman and barbaric crimes imaginable. Such cruelty is an affront to human dignity and an offence against the conscience of every civilised society. No explanation, apology, or appeal to emotion can diminish the gravity of these atrocities or substitute for justice.”
The Meitei Alliance further noted that this atrocity “forms part of a disturbing pattern of abductions and brutal killings.”
The UNC, the apex body representing the 21 Naga tribes of Manipur, has submitted memoranda to both the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister, demanding immediate abrogation of the SoO agreement with all Kuki militant groups. The UNC has also demanded that the KNF-P be declared a terrorist organisation.
Furthermore, the UNC has called for the removal of Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Nemcha Kipgen, citing her alleged marital relationship with KNF-P president Semtinthang alias Thangboi Kipgen.
According to the UNC, Naga areas continue to face attacks by Kuki militant groups operating under the SoO agreement and Myanmar-based armed cadres, posing a serious threat to both the Naga peace process and India’s eastern frontier.
Also Read: Delhi’s SoO Mask Finally Came Off
The UNC has explicitly charged that the violence against Nagas amounts to a violation of the Indo-Naga Framework Agreement signed in August 2015. The UNC has warned that these attacks are “aimed at derailing the Indo-Naga peace process.”
When the state fails to act against armed groups that threaten a peace process it has solemnly committed to, it is not merely failing the Naga people; it is undermining its national security architecture.
The Meitei Alliance has since called for a “comprehensive investigation to identify not only the perpetrators but also those who planned, facilitated, concealed, or enabled them.” According to the Alliance, “This atrocity is not an isolated incident,” linking it to the massacre of six Meitei family members at Jiribam and the abduction and murder of Meitei students.
Hijam Linthoingambi and Phijam Hemanjit were students with their whole lives ahead of them. They were abducted and murdered. Their families are still waiting for justice.
The six Naga hostages, their bodies found lifeless, mutilated, and dismembered, deserve more than an apology from the Kuki Zo Council. They deserve accountability.
What Must Happen
Any credible disarmament process must be transparent, independently verifiable, and subject to credible oversight. The state cannot credibly oversee the disarmament process unless it is widely perceived to be acting as a neutral arbiter.
The state should:
1. Begin disarmament with Kuki militant groups identified by the cited civil society organisations as the principal drivers of the violence
2. Ensure the Joint Monitoring Group is reformed to exclude the groups it is meant to monitor
3. Establish specific, publicly defined benchmarks: surrender of heavy weapons, dismantling of fortified positions, withdrawal of armed personnel from civilian areas
4. Create independent oversight involving civil society organisations, legal observers, and mutually agreed third-party monitors such as the National Human Rights Commission, the Manipur State Human Rights Commission, or ceasefire monitoring bodies with relevant experience in Northeast India
5. Communicate clear consequences for noncompliance, including revocation of SoO agreements and resumption of lawful enforcement actions
Without such measures, sequencing becomes a rhetorical posture rather than an operational strategy.
The Cost of Inaction
“The Nagas maintained neutrality ever since the clashes broke out, as we believed that it was not our war or battle. In return, our brothers have been beheaded, their bodies mutilated. This concerns the credibility of the peace process and the security of India’s eastern frontier.” —KS Paul Leo, former president, UNC
The Meitei organisations have framed this with equal clarity. They have urged “immediate halt to the ‘weaponisation’ of ethnic groups in Manipur and other multi-ethnic regions, warning that such trends pose a serious threat to national unity and internal security.”
Citing Supreme Court observations, their April 2026 memorandum states that “the state cannot support one community against another.”
“Our appeal to the Prime Minister is direct. Honour the Framework Agreement, secure the Naga areas and stop treating armed aggression against Naga civilians as a local disturbance.” —United Naga Council
“Peace can’t be built on appeasement.” —Meitei civil society organisations
This is not a parochial demand. It is a constitutional imperative.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the goal of sequenced disarmament is not to permanently disarm one community while leaving others armed, but to create the conditions under which all communities can feel secure enough to lay down their weapons.
A credible hierarchy of accountability, consistently applied, is the most effective antidote to the cycles of distrust that perpetuate armed conflict.
When the state demonstrates that it is willing and able to disarm those who initiated violence, it earns the moral authority to ask others to do the same.
In the absence of such sequencing, disarmament demands will be perceived as partisan and will be resisted, prolonging the very insecurity they were intended to resolve.
Lasting peace in Manipur depends not on symmetrical treatment of asymmetrical actions, but on an unwavering commitment to accountability as the first principle of disarmament.
The state must act, not as a neutral observer, but as the protector of all citizens. Peace in Manipur depends on it.
(The views expressed are personal. The author, Markson V. Luikham, is an independent researcher and writer focusing on Naga political affairs, conflict studies, and peace processes in Northeast India.)
