The Chickens Will Soon Come Home To Roost As And When The Reckoning Begins
The Kuki Armed Network cannot indefinitely escape the ultimate political and legal price for its armed aggression when the indigenous peoples of Manipur unite across every front.
For years, Manipur has been forced to endure the same intolerable cycle. Violence is followed by outrage, outrage by statements, statements by assurances, and assurances by political accommodation, while victims wait and accountability recedes further into the distance. Meanwhile, the human cost continues to accumulate. The State Government has reported 306 deaths and 49 missing persons since May 3, 2023, while around 60,000 people were displaced at the height of the conflict and tens of thousands have since been resettled.
Yet armed Kuki formations remain an active security problem, while KNO-UPF groups continue to operate within the political space created by the Suspension of Operations framework. That contradiction can no longer be brushed aside.
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September 7, 2026, therefore matters, not because it was the culmination of anything, but because it may prove to have been an early convergence point in a larger political realignment. All nine Naga legislators stayed away from the final sitting of the Assembly over the killing of six Naga civilians and what they described as the Government’s failure to deliver justice in the Leilon Vaiphei case. On the same day, 29 civil-society organisations demanded abrogation of the SoO agreements with the Kuki National Organisation and United People’s Front and prosecution of cadres involved in criminal acts.
More importantly, that resolution brought Naga and Meitei organisations into the same political demand. Its endorsing bodies included the Manipur Naga Youth Organisation, Naga Peoples Union, Zeliangrong Union and Zeliangrong Union Imphal alongside the Meitei Alliance, Meitei Heritage Society and Meetei/Meitei Tribe Union. A Naga-Meitei civil-society convergence around security, accountability and the SoO framework is therefore beginning to take institutional form.
That convergence did not emerge from nowhere. Naga and Meitei organisations have increasingly found themselves confronting overlapping questions of demographic security, illegal immigration, land, migration, census and delimitation. Their political histories and aspirations are not identical, and their differences have not disappeared. They do not need to. Two indigenous peoples do not have to resolve every historical or constitutional disagreement before recognising that prolonged armed conflict and political fragmentation threaten the security and future of both.
The security developments surrounding September 7 add another dimension. Manipur Police, CoBRA, CRPF, Mahila personnel and the Rapid Action Force raided an unauthorised camp at Gampum allegedly linked to the Kuki Liberation Army, apprehending eight cadres and recovering seven automatic weapons. Kuki organisations subsequently demanded the release of the cadres and an independent inquiry, arguing that the camp was connected to the SoO arrangement.
A day earlier, the Indian Army and Assam Rifles had also conducted an operation against the United Kuki National Army near Phaibong, killing two cadres and recovering automatic weapons and ammunition. The UKNA is not a signatory to the KNO-UPF SoO framework and must not be conflated with those groups. The timing, however, is significant. Indigenous political demands, enforcement action and the continuing presence of Kuki armed formations converged.
The Leilon Vaiphei killings now sit at the centre of that confrontation. Six Naga men were abducted from Leilon Vaiphei village on May 13, and their remains were recovered on June 10 during a joint search involving Manipur Police, CRPF and Assam Rifles. The bodies were reportedly so badly mutilated and dismembered that identification was possible only through clothing and personal effects. Imphal Times reported that they were identified “not from their faces or physiques but from the dresses.” The Kuki-Zo Council chairman, Henlianthang Thanglet, subsequently apologised and called the killings a “great mistake” while seeking an impartial investigation, although the Council later clarified that the statement was not an admission of collective responsibility.
That clarification cannot close the matter. Who abducted the six men? Who killed them? Who organised or facilitated the operation? Was there a chain of command? Which armed cadres were involved? These questions must be pursued to their logical conclusion. The NIA investigation has already produced arrests, with four persons taken into custody by July 18. Arrests, however, are only the beginning. The public is entitled to know what the investigation establishes and who ultimately bears responsibility.
The Naga legislators had already written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah on August 31 demanding action against Kuki-Zo leaders they said had claimed responsibility for the killings and dismemberment, including Thangboi Kipgen. Eight of the nine Naga MLAs signed that letter.
As a Naga writer speaking from within this conflict, I do not regard the boycott as a symbolic gesture that can end when the Assembly session ends. If our representatives have taken this position, they must convert it into sustained institutional pressure: demand transparency regarding FIRs, arrests and forensic findings, raise the matter repeatedly with Parliament and the Union Home Ministry, coordinate with civil society and pursue every constitutional and judicial remedy available. A boycott can register protest. Sustained institutional pressure can produce consequences.
And the pressure has not stopped. On September 9, the Working Committee of the Joint Tribes Council Manipur opposed the Chief Minister’s proposed visit to Luangkao over the unresolved killing of six Liangmai Naga men.
But Leilon Vaiphei is only one expression of the larger problem. The deeper question is why Kuki armed groups continue to possess political and operational space under an arrangement created in the name of peace. The 29-organisation resolution directly challenges that architecture, citing records of violence, criminal activity and ground-rule violations and demanding prosecution of cadres involved in criminal acts. Its significance lies in the fact that the demand has been endorsed by organisations representing both Naga and Meitei constituencies.
The Governments of India and Manipur therefore face questions they can no longer answer with general assurances. What violations have been recorded? Which were investigated? What sanctions followed? How has the Joint Monitoring Group functioned? What consequences follow when a signatory breaches the ground rules?
The Government’s revised framework set out stringent physical verification of cadres, reduced and relocated designated camps, required weapons to be moved to nearby security-force facilities and stated that violations would be dealt with firmly, including review of the SoO Agreement.
Yet the Governments renewed the re-negotiated arrangement despite the Manipur Cabinet’s March 2023 decision to withdraw from talks and SoO agreements with the Kuki National Army and Zomi Revolutionary Front, and despite the unanimous Assembly resolution of February 29, 2024 urging the Central Government to completely abrogate the SoO pact with Kuki-Zo militant groups.
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That contradiction lies at the heart of the crisis.
A Suspension of Operations agreement is not a constitutional immunity certificate. It cannot erase criminal liability or place armed cadres beyond investigation and prosecution. If the SoO is genuinely a peace mechanism, its conditions must be enforceable. If violations are established, consequences must follow. Otherwise, the public is entitled to ask whether the framework is preserving peace or preserving political space for armed organisations.
Naga-Meitei cooperation must now move beyond occasional crisis management and into sustained political pressure through Parliament, governments, courts, investigating agencies, civil society and the public sphere. Political leaders must demand answers in writing, lawyers must pursue remedies, and civil society must preserve evidence and maintain a permanent accountability record.
The purpose is not collective punishment of Kuki civilians. Responsibility must remain individual. Armed groups, cadres, commanders, facilitators and political actors who bear individual criminal responsibility cannot be allowed to use community identity, armed power or political negotiations as shields from the law.
If the present trajectory continues for another ten or fifteen years, displacement may become entrenched, demographic anxieties may intensify, armed structures may consolidate and political fragmentation may deepen. What is temporary today could become permanent tomorrow.
September 7 may therefore prove more significant than it appears today. It brought together a Naga political revolt against delayed justice, a Naga-Meitei civil-society challenge to the SoO framework and direct action against a Kuki armed formation operating from an unauthorised camp. Its significance will ultimately be determined by what comes next.
This is the moment for Naga and Meitei leadership to move with greater unity, political intelligence and resolve. Our differences must not prevent cooperation where our common interests are clear, nor should cooperation require either community to surrender legitimate political positions. The immediate task is to build enough political strength to ensure that no armed organisation can indefinitely hold our people hostage while governments repeatedly postpone the consequences of violations.
The accumulated consequences of violence, terrorism, impunity and political accommodation are now reaching the institutions that sustained the old arrangement. That is why the chickens will soon come home to roost. The reckoning will not arrive because it is announced in a speech. It will arrive when elected representatives remain united, civil society refuses to retreat, evidence is preserved, investigations are relentlessly pursued, Parliament is confronted with unanswered questions, courts are approached where necessary and the Government of India is compelled to confront the political consequences of continued ambiguity.
As Naga and Meitei leaders, we have a responsibility that extends beyond one Assembly sitting, one village or one case. We must defend our people, defend the political, constitutional and territorial rights of the Naga people and safeguard the legitimate interests we share with the Meitei people, while pursuing a peace in which security is not purchased through permanent political concessions to armed coercion. Every legitimate political, parliamentary, diplomatic, administrative, investigative and judicial instrument available must be used with determination.
The objective is not revenge. It is accountability. It is to end armed aggression, establish individual responsibility and dismantle the conditions that sustain impunity.
Manipur has already paid too high a price for waiting. Let September 7 be the beginning of something larger. That future will be determined by whether the indigenous leadership has the courage to turn convergence into organisation, organisation into political pressure, and political pressure into results.
Manipur does not need another promise that tomorrow will be better. It needs justice that can be demonstrated, accountability that can be enforced, and consequences that cannot be postponed.
Views expressed are personal. The author is an independent researcher and writer focusing on the Indo-Naga issue, Naga political affairs, and the political, historical and contemporary affairs of Northeast India.
