Nearly six months after her 19-year-old son Anthony went missing after crossing the buffer zone, Premlata Ningthoujam keeps a plate out for him even today while they eat their daily meals. A tradition in Meitei communities, the practice is something families follow in the hopes that their loved ones will return. “Every time we clear the untouched plate, our hearts break all over again,” Ms. Ningthoujam said.
Ms. Ningthoujam was among the dozens of people who arrived in Delhi on Thursday in a bid to make an appeal to find their loved ones — people who were reported to have gone missing in the course of the ethnic conflict in Manipur, which began one year ago (May 3).
A group of Meitei civil society organisations had brought the families together for a presser at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, stating that there was still no news of 31 people from the Meitei community who had gone missing during the conflict. As the families addressed the press, a poster behind them had pictures of those missing, with the phrase: “Let them Rest in Peace, #Justice4MissingMeeteis”.
In the one year of the conflict between the valley-based Meitei people and the hills-based Kuki-Zo tribal people, over 220 people have been killed, thousands of others have been injured, and tens of thousands of people have been internally displaced. Amidst this, while the Meitei community has said that there was no news of 31 of their people still missing, the Kuki-Zo people have said 15 of theirs were still unaccounted for.
Ex-journalist missing
In Delhi for the gathering, 47-year-old Kabita Atom said, “I last saw my husband on May 6 last year. That afternoon he was visiting a friend and he told me on the phone that he would be back soon. We never saw him after that.” A former journalist, Atom Samarendra, along with his friend Y. Kiran Kumar, had gone missing that day.
“If he is alive, then we request that he be released and if not, at least his remains should be sent back to us for the last rites,” she said, adding that while the Manipur police registered the First Information Report that very day, they had not got in touch with them since about the investigation.
Ms. Kabita, who is now raising their two sons, aged 17 and 13, said conversations with the children are getting more difficult by the day. “In the beginning, my younger one would keep saying he will go find his father and take his place. They are angry too. At one point, my older one was saying he wanted to take revenge even as I kept trying to explain that is not the way to deal with this,” Ms. Kabita said, adding that members of radical armed outfits like Arambai Tenggol had also made promises to find him but to no avail.
Thoihenba Atom, 17, told The Hindu that it took more than three months for him to start talking to people after his father disappeared. “My brother, on the other hand, will need more time, looks like,” he said. Thoihenba, who just appeared for his Class 10 examination at the Jawahar Navoday Vidyalaya, says he wants to prepare for the National Defence Academy and join the Army.
The civil society organisations that had called for the press conference on Thursday, said in a joint statement, on behalf of the families of the missing persons, “The families earnestly appeal to the Government of India, the Government of Manipur, and the Kuki community to facilitate the return of their loved ones if they are alive, or their bodies if they are dead.”
As Kuki-Zo and Meitei groups in Manipur plan for events across the State in the hills and the valley to mark one year since the beginning of the conflict, groups of both communities are also planning demonstrations in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on May 3.
