Manipur: Five Killed in Fresh Ethnic Violence as Protests Target Kuki Ceasefire
Five Kuki men were killed in two incidents in Manipur over the weekend, police said, as fresh ethnic violence erupted amid mass protests over the Kuki ceasefire arrangement.
Highlights
- Five people were killed in two separate incidents in Manipur, police said on Sunday, as fresh ethnic violence erupted in the state.
- Three men from the Kuki community were killed in an exchange of gunfire in Noney district on Saturday; the bodies of two others, missing since earlier in the week, were recovered in Kangpokpi district on Sunday.
- A Kuki tribal body blamed Naga separatist outfits; the NSCN-IM has denied involvement, and police have not named those responsible.
- The killings came amid mass protests in Imphal demanding the scrapping of the ceasefire arrangement between Kuki armed groups and the Indian state.
Five people were killed in two separate incidents in India’s northeastern state of Manipur, police said on Sunday, as fresh ethnic violence erupted in the conflict-hit region, Reuters reported on 1 November 2026. Three men from the Kuki tribal group were killed in an exchange of gunfire between "unidentified armed miscreants" in the state’s Noney district on Saturday, according to a police statement. The bodies of two other men from the same community, who had gone missing earlier this week, were recovered in Kangpokpi district on Sunday morning after security personnel launched a search operation, a second police statement said.
The two incidents
The two youths whose bodies were recovered had been missing since 28 October from Taphou Kuki village in Senapati, and were identified as Thangginlun Congloi, 21, and Paoginlal Hangsing, 20, the Deccan Herald reported on 1 November 2026. A joint team of security forces recovered the bodies from an area along NH-2, which connects the Naga-dominated Senapati district. The killings were reported in the same weekend that political mobilisation elsewhere in India filled the streets — in Delhi, the INDIA bloc’s ‘Chalo Delhi’ rally took the fight over voter rolls to Ramlila Maidan — but in Manipur the mobilisation is about the ceasefire itself.
Blame claimed, and denied
A top Kuki tribal body blamed Naga separatist outfits for the killings, describing them as a "direct unprovoked assault . . . in their homeland", Reuters reported. Kuki organisations alleged the involvement of the NSCN-IM, which has been under a ceasefire agreement since 1997; the group has denied involvement, the Deccan Herald reported. Police have not named those responsible for the killings. Both Deputy Chief Ministers — Nemcha Kipgen, a Kuki, and Losii Dikho, a Naga — condemned the killings, according to the same report. This article reports the claims and the denial as they were made; responsibility has not been established by the police investigation.
Protests and a longer conflict
The killings came amid mass protests attended by hundreds of thousands of people in the state capital Imphal and other areas, demanding the abrogation of a ceasefire arrangement between Kuki armed groups and the Indian state, Reuters reported. The latest Kuki-Naga clashes add to tensions in a state where the Kuki community is also in an ethnic conflict with the mainly Hindu Meitei community that began in May 2023 over economic benefits and job quotas; more than 60,000 people displaced by that conflict, which has claimed more than 300 lives, continue to live in temporary shelters. The Naga-Kuki violence that reignited in February this year has itself claimed more than 60 lives, the Deccan Herald reported. Security responses of this kind — like the enforcement drives we covered in Delhi’s GRAP restrictions taking effect on 1 November — operate in a very different register from Manipur’s, where the question is not regulation but whether armed ceasefires still hold.
What happens next
Security has been beefed up in areas dominated by Nagas and Kukis amid fears of further escalation, the Deccan Herald reported. With protests demanding the end of the Kuki ceasefire arrangement, a denial on record from the group accused, and an investigation that has not yet named suspects, the state’s overlapping conflicts — Kuki-Meitei since 2023 and Kuki-Naga since February — are now pressing on the same ceasefire architecture at the same time.
