KACHEAKLUNGLIU WAS still reeling from shock as she sat in the psychiatric ward of the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, on 19 June. A month earlier, her life had been turned upside down when she, her husband and other Nagas had been kidnapped by a group of Kukis. Now her husband was dead and she was recuperating in the hospital. She felt physically and mentally weak but demanded justice for what had happened.
Since May 2023, the state of Manipur, in India’s Northeast, has witnessed intense ethnic violence between the Meitei, concentrated in the Imphal Valley and forming the majority of the population, and the tribal Kuki-Zo, inhabiting the state’s hills. Most Kuki-Zos are Christian and most Meiteis Hindu, but the conflict is centered on land-rights tied to ethnicity rather than on religion. Over the last three years, groups of both have taken up arms to defend their own community and to attack the other. India’s central government in New Delhi and the Manipur state government in Imphal have failed to de-escalate tensions and bring about peace. And, since February this year, things have become worse, with the Kukis and the Nagas – who share the hills – reigniting age-old animosities.
Kacheaklungliu, who is in her early forties, lived in the village of Konsakhul with her husband, Mano Tiumae, who was a pastor, and their children. Konsakhul is a Naga-majority settlement in the Kuki-majority district of Kangpokpi. On 13 May, Kacheaklungliu, Tiumae and 16 others were kidnapped in the adjacent Kuki-majority village of Leilon Vaiphei, allegedly by a Kuki militant group. “We were all coming from a wedding when our cars were stopped by the women of Leilon Vaiphei, who were guarding the entrance of the village,” Kacheaklungliu told me at the hospital in June. “We were made to wait for a few hours, after which the men and women from Leilon Vaiphei handed us over to the Kuki militant group KNF.” The KNF, or Kuki National Front, is an active armed militant organisation primarily operating in Manipur.
Kacheaklungliu was sent with 11 others to a different location. “We were blindfolded for the next three to four days,” she recalled. She remembered being moved with the others to an unknown location. Six men, including her husband, were separated from the group. They continued to be blindfolded even while eating and using the washrooms.