The Centre will deploy around 90 more companies of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) in Manipur, the state government’s Security Advisor Kuldiep Singh said on Friday.The troops will be in addition to the 198 companies that are already in Manipur.”We are getting approximately 90 companies of CAPF, over and above the 198 companies which were earlier sent to the state. A sizeable number of them have already reached Imphal. We are distributing forces to protect the lives and properties of the citizens and vulnerable points,” Singh said at a press conbference after holding a security review meeting in the state’s capital.The authorities would set up coordination cells and joint control rooms in each district, he said after the meeting which was attended by representatives of the Army, BSF, CRPF, Assam Rifles, SSB, ITBP and the Manipur Police.”A number of SOPs (standard operating procedure) have been prepared for deployment of forces for coordination, for functioning, for fringe area security, for national highways security, and for any other important points which have to be taken care of,” Singh said.Chief Minister N Biren Singh would be briefed about the outcome of the meeting as is done in all similar cases, he said.Singh also informed that the ethnic violence that engulfed the state in May last year has so far claimed 258 lives including militants. The security advisor said that 32 people were arrested in connection with vandalism and torching of properties of ministers and MLAs while around 3,000 looted weapons have been recovered.Meanwhile, the last rites of nine Meiteis, including three women and three children killed in three different incidents in the Jiribam district recently, were performed on Friday after the bodies were brought from Assam’s Silchar Medical College and Hospital (SMCH). Escorted by the police, two trucks carried the bodies to Jiribam.Official sources said family members and village representatives of the deceased had gone to collect the bodies. Later, the last rites were performed in the presence of grieving family members, relatives and locals.The three women and three children including an eight-month-old, were allegedly abducted from a Meitei relief camp on November 11 in the Borobekra subdivision of Jiribam while the Central Reserve Police Force and the police gunned down ten people belonging to the Kuki community claiming they were militants. Kuki-Zo organisations claimed they were village volunteers.”The CRPF post was attacked during which 10 militants were neutralised. Soon after that, it came to light that three women and three children were abducted,” Kuldiep Singh said. No information is available if the militants involved in the abduction belonged to Suspension of Operations (SoO) groups but it will be checked, Singh said adding that NIA is looking into the cases.The SoO pact was signed by the Centre, the Manipur government and two conglomerates of Kuki militant outfits Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and United People’s Front (UPF).The pact was signed in 2008 and extended periodically thereafter.The bodies of the six women and children were recovered from three different places near the Assam-Manipur interstate border on three different days and taken to the SMCH for post-mortem examinations.
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