Supreme Court orders Manipur chief secretary to explain camp deaths

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Chief Secretary of Manipur to file an affidavit on deaths in camps that still house people displaced by the 2023 ethnic violence. The bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana was hearing the long-running petitions on investigation and trial of sexual-violence cases from that conflict.

Figures before the court do not all match, and the bench wants the state to reconcile them. A newspaper account of 7 June 2026 spoke of 25 unnatural deaths of internally displaced people. Aahana Devi, an IAS officer acting as coordinator, wrote in a 17 July email that 640 deaths had occurred in camps across eight districts, 34 of them unnatural. Post-mortems, she said, were done in 20 cases. Twenty-five criminal cases were registered. Prosecution had begun in four. No proper account of the rest had reached her.

The court asked why autopsies stopped at 20 when the unnatural-death count was 25 in one telling and 34 in another. It asked why next of kin received Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 when other relief schemes contemplate Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. It asked for the post-mortem conclusions themselves, including one death said to have followed sexual assault. "Tell your Chief Secretary not to invite orders. Tell us what measures you have taken," the Chief Justice told the Advocate General, pointing to information the court-appointed committee had sought on 4 July.

That committee, led by Justice Gita Mittal, had already been told to check claims that about 24,000 affected families still wait on rehabilitation schemes. The new order adds a second track: safety and dignity inside the camps, medical cover, and daily necessities. The state must say what it has done, not only what it plans.

On the criminal side, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati said the CBI had investigated 31 cases and filed final reports in 28, with three still open. The state has 42 special investigation teams in eight districts. Across the wider docket, 302 chargesheets have been filed, 1,583 cases have closure reports, and 1,135 remain under investigation. Trials have started in 38. Two special courts are meant to hear CBI and NIA cases only. The bench said it expected those courts to move.

The 2023 violence split Imphal Valley and the hill districts and put tens of thousands into camps that were sold as temporary. Three years later the camps are still a population. A death inside them can be recorded as natural, unnatural, or not recorded with a post-mortem at all. The court's irritation is about that recording. If 34 people died unnaturally and only 20 were opened by a doctor, the file is incomplete. If the payment to a family is Rs 20,000, the file is also a statement of what a camp life is worth on paper.

The Manipur Commission for Protection of Child Rights has, in parallel, called for a state plan that covers protection, school access, welfare and mental-health care for children in the same camps. That recommendation is not the Supreme Court's order. It is a second official signal that camp life is no longer a short emergency. Education and health desks will have to answer it even if the affidavit the Chief Secretary now owes is written only about deaths.

The Chief Secretary has to put numbers, autopsy reports and compensation orders in one paper. The bench has already said it does not want to be invited to pass further directions. That is a warning. The next hearing will show whether Manipur answered the 4 July questions or only the ones asked on Thursday.