Four Liangmai Naga civilians killed on the Kangpokpi–Senapati road

Police recovered four bodies on Friday morning from a stretch of road between Makui Ashang and Thanamba Naga villages in Manipur's Kangpokpi district. Armed men had fired on a vehicle there at about 8.30 a.m. on Thursday. The dead were Liangmai Naga civilians. A fifth person, Gaikamang Ringkangmai, 44, was in Senapati district hospital with a bullet wound in his left arm.

The dead were named as Tadsongbou Ringkangmai, founder and principal of Right Path School; Mariakdibou Wijunamai and Anil Wijunamai of Makui, listed by the United Naga Council as youth-club office bearers; and Wisobou Charenamai, chairman of the Chawangkining Village Authority. Some local reports also named Japou M.K., a student leader from Thonglang Akutpa, among the dead after a body was found near the site later on Thursday. Officials speaking to The Hindu on Friday described four dead and one injured.

Gaikamang told reporters the group of six was travelling from Makui to Senapati on a route they used often. We were ambushed by militants. Four of our colleagues died on the spot, while two of us escaped. He said the attackers wore full camouflage. Security teams tried to reach the site on Thursday evening and could not, officials said, because of a blockade in a village along the way. A state police party got through on Friday and moved the bodies toward Senapati, the Naga-majority district where a crowd had already gathered on Thursday night to demand that the dead be brought there.

The United Naga Council blamed the Kuki National Front (Presidential) and the Kuki Revolutionary Army. Neither outfit had issued a public claim by Friday. UNC called the shooting a direct challenge to peace, the Indo-Naga peace process, and to the very existence of Nagas in our ancestral lands. It announced a one-day genna, a customary halt, across Naga areas on Friday. Senapati observed a shutdown.

The ambush came three days after arson and clashes between Naga and Kuki groups in Senapati on 24 August, in which houses were burned and a CRPF trooper was hurt. It came a day after deputy chief minister Losii Dikho met UNC leaders in Senapati to talk about cooling the hills. Chief minister Y. Khemchand Singh chaired a security meeting on Thursday and ordered forces to identify and arrest those responsible.

Kangpokpi is a Kuki-majority district. Senapati is Naga-majority. The IT Road that links them is a thin administrative line on a map and a hard one on the ground. A school principal and a village chairman dying on that road, in daylight, in camouflage fire, is the sort of fact that pulls community militias back onto the road even when state leaders are in the next room talking about restraint.

Manipur's hill districts have lived with parallel authorities for years: valley government, hill councils, suspended talks with Naga groups, and Kuki armed organisations that multiplied during the 2023-24 valley-hill war. A civilian vehicle on the IT Road is a soft target in that geometry. Putting a school principal and a village chairman in the same car made the target politically louder than a random ambush.

The Indo-Naga ceasefire still exists on paper. UNC's line that the shooting is a challenge to that process is a warning to Delhi as much as to Imphal. If Naga areas treat the dead as a community loss rather than a crime with named accused, the next protest will be a blockade, not a memorial. Singh's arrest order will be judged by whether the names that appear are names the councils already have.

No group has claimed the shooting. The survivor's description of uniforms is the only firsthand account so far. The bodies are in Senapati. The political clock is the UNC genna and the chief minister's arrest order. If those arrests do not come with names the councils recognise, the next blockade will not wait for another dialogue in Senapati.