Police retrieve four Liangmai Naga bodies a day after the Kangpokpi ambush

A Manipur police team reached the stretch between Makui Ashang and Thanamba Naga villages on Friday morning and lifted the bodies of four Liangmai Naga civilians shot on Thursday at about 8.30 a.m. Security units had tried the evening before and turned back after a blockade on the route. The bodies were taken toward Senapati district headquarters after a night protest there demanded they be brought to the Naga-majority district rather than held in Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi.

The Hindu, quoting officials, named the dead as Tadsongbou Ringkangmai, founder and principal of a private school; M. Wijunamai, also reported as Mariakdibou Wijunamai; Anil Wijunamai; and Wisobou Charenamai, chairman of the Chawangkining Village Authority. Gaikamang Ringkangmai, 44, was admitted to Senapati district hospital with a bullet wound in the left arm. Nagaland Post later said Wisobou's body was found near the site after he had been listed missing, and that Japou M.K., a student leader from Thonglang Akutpa, was among the dead, taking some local counts to five. Officials speaking to national wires stayed with four dead and one injured.

Gaikamang told reporters the group of six often used the road from Makui to Senapati. He said the attackers wore full camouflage. Two men got away. Four died on the spot. No outfit has claimed the shooting. The United Naga Council blamed the Kuki National Front (Presidential) and the Kuki Revolutionary Army and called the attack a challenge to the Indo-Naga peace process and to Naga presence on ancestral land. The council announced a one-day genna, a stop on ordinary work and a period of community observance, across Naga areas on Friday.

The ambush sat three days after arson and clashes between Naga and Kuki groups in adjoining Senapati on 24 August, when houses burned and a CRPF jawan was hurt. It sat one day after deputy chief minister Losii Dikho took a state team to Senapati to talk with the UNC about cooling the hills. Chief Minister Y. Khemchand Singh called a security meeting and told forces to identify and arrest those involved.

Kangpokpi is the district that absorbed Kuki settlements during the wider Manipur conflict that opened in 2023. Senapati is Naga country. The IT Road between them is a corridor, not a mixed town. An ambush on that corridor, in camouflage, aimed at a school principal and a village chairman, is a political killing even before a claim arrives. The UNC's charge against named Kuki groups is an allegation. It is also the frame that will decide whether Friday's retrieval ends the week or starts a shutdown.

People in Senapati had already observed a halt on Thursday night. Bodies lying overnight in Kangpokpi were unacceptable to that crowd. The Friday pickup was therefore a logistics task and a communal one. State police, not a central column, did the work. That choice keeps the case inside Manipur's own chain of command. It also leaves the investigation with a force that both communities already distrust.

The missing-person confusion around Wisobou and Japou will have to be closed in the post-mortem list. Names move fast in hill killings and then harden. Tadsongbou's school and Wisobou's village chair are the two titles that will be repeated in memorials. Gaikamang's account of camouflage is the detail investigators can actually use. Until an arrest or a claim, the record is four or five Liangmai dead on a road they used every week, a day after the state had gone to Senapati to talk about peace.