His Facebook status describes himself as: “Decent looking criminal.” This was possibly posted — given the ban on the Internet in Manipur — before the State police registered a criminal case against Pramot Singh on July 8.
Mr. Singh was booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., intentional insult with an intent to provoke breach of peace and other offences. The case was based on a complaint lodged by the Kuki Students’ Organisation on June 13.
Another posts reads: “Take action in silence, no lion attacks in noise.” The emphasis on silent action could have been the reason why Mr. Singh and his organisation, the Meitei Leepun (ML), were quite low-key for years until they burst onto the scene after Manipur fell into a cycle of violence from the night of May 3, allegedly because of a tribal protest against a recommendation for granting Scheduled Tribe status to the majority Meitei community.
