Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh.
Credit: PTI Photo
Guwahati: Manipur CM N Biren Singh on Friday said that he had asked the Army to take the responsibility of rescuing a 56-year-old Meitei man, who, according to him, had gone missing from inside an army camp in Kuki-dominated Kangpokpi district on November 25.
Singh's statement came on a day when a large number of protesters, mainly women, staged a protest and demanded his immediate rescue.
The Army on November 26 issued a statement stating that Laishram Kamal Babu, a resident of Cachar district in Assam, was engaged as a work supervisor by a contractor working with Military Engineering Services at Leimakhong military station in Kangpokpi district.
His family informed that he did not return home after work and a search drive was immediately launched.
As the Joint Action Committee (JAC)—a civil society group in Imphal— intensified protest, the CM on Friday said in a statement, "The signature of Kamalbabu could be found at the entry register of the army campus, showing that he had gone missing from inside the campus.
"The army has been asked to take the responsibility of rescuing the missing person and make the public know his whereabouts."
Singh met members of the JAC.
The army on Friday reportedly closed the Kangpokpi-Churachandpur road in view of the possibility of violent protest by the Meiteis from the Valley. Kangpokpi shares a boundary with Imphal West.
The Committee on Tribal Unity, a forum of Kuki-Zo organisations in Kangpokpi, issued a 12-hour "shutdown" in the district on Saturday in view of possible tension over the incident.
The army earlier said they pressed sniffer dogs, drones and other equipment in search of the missing person.
The incident caused fresh tension in the Valley at a time the state government was trying to pacify the Meitei organisations leading protest against the abduction and killing of six Meitei women and children allegedly by Kuki insurgents in Jiribam district.