A court in Manipur has issued a non-bailable warrant for the arrest and production of Meitei Leepun chief Pramot Singh in a case registered against him by the Churachandpur police in June for allegedly promoting enmity between communities and making statements prejudicial to national integration.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Churachandpur issued the warrant on October 9 after the police submitted that they had not been able to go to Imphal West, where Mr. Singh is believed to be located, due to the ongoing ethnic conflict.
The Churachandpur police said they had requested the jurisdictional police in Imphal West district to act but did not receive any response. A reminder with a request for a house search in the Lamphel area also went unanswered. The police added that a notice was also served on the accused under Section 41a of the Code of Criminal Procedure, but there was no response.
Throughout the past five months of ethnic conflict, Mr. Singh’s Meitei Leepun has consistently been accused of amassing mobs to attack Kuki-Zo villages and neighbourhoods. In the early weeks of the conflict, which started in May, there were also allegations that members of Meitei Leepun and another similar outfit, Arambai Tenggol, were involved in the looting of police armouries.
Both outfits refer to themselves as cultural youth organisations and claim to be committed to preserving the Sanamahi culture of the Meitei people.
Mr. Singh has been accused of making inflammatory statements against the Kuki-Zo community on several occasions on social media and in interviews with the media, even amid the ongoing conflict.
The case for which a warrant has now been issued was registered under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc.), 153B (statements prejudicial to national integration), 500 (punishment for defamation), and 505 (statements conducing public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Churachandpur police station in June.
Another first information report (FIR) was registered against Mr. Singh at the Kangpokpi police station under Sections 120B, 153A, 504, 505, 506 and 34 of the IPC, which pertain to criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc., act prejudicial to maintenance of harmony, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, public mischief, and punishment for criminal intimidation with common intention.
At the time this FIR was reported in the press, Mr. Singh told The Hindu that he was not aware of any case against him and that he was “not bothered”.
The Kangpokpi FIR was registered on a complaint filed by the Kuki Students’ Organization (KSO), which mentioned an interview that Mr. Singh gave to The Wire on June 7 in which he said that “Kukis are outsiders who are not indigenous to Manipur”.
In the interview, Mr. Singh also accepted that Meitei Leepun was involved in giving gun training to people who have gun licences and declared that if the government, either in Delhi or in Manipur, did not intervene quickly, “there will be a civil war and the Kukis will not be able to defend themselves”.
