Army says, insurgents in Manipur intend to use people as human shields

The Indian Army has exposed a sinister plan by insurgents to exploit innocent people as human shields, including women and children, in order to strike and wreak havoc in the violent Manipur.

 

On May 28, the Indian Army’s Spear Corps tweeted about intercepted transcripts of insurgent plans to utilise people as human shields while targeting security personnel. The tweet describes an insurgent strategy to employ defenceless civilians as human shields and obstruct the work of the security forces.

 

The plan states that ‘Party A instructs and informs Party B that they will have to complete a task by May 27 and destroy a village by using the people as human shields,’ according to army sources.

 

The intercepted conversation also showed that the insurgents had an ample supply of weaponry and that they anticipated receiving more of them soon. Several organisations are allegedly attempting to use the Manipur crisis to spread fear and instability, according to Army sources.

 

According to army sources, they also learned specifically that these terrorist organisations intended to use women and children as human shields, and if there were deaths, to start a propaganda campaign against the Indian Army in Manipur.

 

These incidents were allegedly reported from several places throughout the violent Manipur, according to sources.

 

According to Army sources, every effort was being taken to prevent the insurgent group’s evil plans from coming to fruition and a people-friendly strategy was being used.

 

After a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was held in the state’s hill districts on May 3 to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) designation, the ethnic hostilities that have claimed more than 75 lives in Manipur started. Tension over the displacement of Kuki people from reserve forest area sparked a string of local agitations before to the violence.

 

On Sunday, Chief Minister N Biren Singh claimed that since an operation to reestablish calm in the northeastern state was started, security personnel had killed close to 40 armed terrorists who had been torching homes and shooting at residents.

 

According to sources, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will start his travel to Manipur on Monday. While there, he would attend a number of meetings to assess the situation and formulate a plan for how to get things back to normal. He will be making his first trip to the region since the fighting started on May 3.