बेबाक · Editorial
Manipur's Firewood Killings Show a State Still Unable to Guarantee the Ordinary Day
When villagers die gathering firewood and grieving families carry bodies to the Chief Minister's gate, the first duty of the state, the protection of life, has not been met.
What happened
Over two days, Manipur has again counted its dead. On Monday, October 19, suspected militants attacked a group collecting firewood in the hills along the Imphal East-Kangpokpi district border, according to several reports. Three people were killed and others injured. Some accounts give three injured and others four, and three people are reported missing. A day earlier, on October 18, clashes between two communities in Thoubal district left at least one person dead. Houses and vehicles were set on fire in Khangabok and Sangaiyumpham, and prohibitory orders followed. According to IANS, police said three people were killed, several injured and three reported missing in separate incidents in Imphal East and Thoubal districts. These are not isolated crimes. They are the return of a pattern the state was meant to have contained.
Grief at the gate
What followed in Imphal says as much as the killings. Protesters placed the bodies of two Meitei men, allegedly killed by suspected militants in Kangpokpi district, outside the Chief Minister's bungalow in Babupara. Police fired tear gas to disperse them. The scene is grim, but it should be read plainly. A grieving community chose the seat of executive power as the place to lay its dead, and that is a verdict on trust. It suggests that families no longer believe their losses will be answered through police stations, courts and district administrations. The Chief Minister has condemned the killings and ordered tighter security in vulnerable areas, and security forces have launched operations. These are necessary steps. They are not yet an answer to that loss of faith.
Both sides of the line
Any honest reading must hold two truths at once. One report attributes the killings to Kuki militants. Most reports say only 'suspected militants', and that attribution should be treated as unproven until investigators establish it. For many in the valley, the firewood killings are taken as proof that the hills remain a staging ground for armed groups and that patrols have not secured the margins where poor families must work. For communities in the hills, every such incident brings fear of reprisal, collective blame and violence like that seen in Thoubal. Both fears are real and both are rational. A state that answers one community's grief by feeding the other's terror will only deepen the cycle it says it wants to end.
The poorest pay first
The detail that should trouble the nation most is the simplest one: the victims were collecting firewood. These were not combatants or political actors. They were people whose livelihood depends on reaching the forest edge, the same border zones where the state's presence is thinnest. In Thoubal, homes and vehicles, the working assets of ordinary households, were set on fire. In every conflict the poor carry the heaviest cost, because they cannot afford to stay indoors. A citizen who must weigh death against firewood has not been given the most basic thing a republic promises: the ordinary day. Security planning that guards towns and highways but leaves fuel, fodder and farm routes exposed protects the wrong map.
The way forward
Three steps are both feasible and urgent. First, the state police and central forces should publish a joint security plan for the Imphal East-Kangpokpi and Thoubal fringe areas, with escorted or scheduled access for firewood and farm work, so that a livelihood is no longer a gamble. Second, the Kangpokpi killings and the Thoubal arson should be investigated by a single agency with a deadline, so that responsibility rests on evidence rather than rumour, and progress in the search for the three missing should be reported regularly. Third, district administrations should convene joint peace committees with representatives of both communities to prevent reprisals in Khangabok, Sangaiyumpham and similar flashpoints. Families should be able to bring their grief to a courtroom, not a Chief Minister's gate.
A citizen who must weigh death against firewood has not been given the most basic thing a republic promises: the ordinary day.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the FarziUPSC desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →