At 16,Ahanthem Amujao was looking after his family. With an alcoholic father and three brothers and a sister,all younger,the teenager had dropped out of school in Class IV and taken up work as a daily wager along with his mother. Amujao was shot dead in an alleged encounter in January; his family says he had no involvement with miitants. Activists who have filed a petition in the Supreme Court have cited Amujaos example among those of 1,528 victims of alleged extrajudicial killings between May 1979 and May 2012 in Manipur. The court on Monday admitted the petition,filed by the Extrajudicial Execution Victims Families Association. Ahanthem Amujao Amujao was working at a construction site in Imphal,12 kilometres from his village Swombung. After a days visit to his family on January 26,he left for work the next evening. That was the last his family saw him. On January 29 morning,the bada sahib of the construction site sent someone to our home to ask why Amujao wasnt back at work, says his aunt Ahanthem Ito. The same evening,we got a call from the police saying he had been killed in an encounter and we had to come to identify his body. Ito has petitioned the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on the alleged fake encounter. Amujaos uncle Ahanthem Basanta identifed the body. There were three bullet holes on his jacket but seven on his torso. Both arms were twisted and seemed broken and there were bruises all over his body, he says. The family says that far from being involved with any underground group,Amujao had no interest in politics. His mother Tamphi says his girlfriend,from a neighbouring village,told the family Amujao had called her on the evening of the alleged encounter. She told me Amujao had said he was being chased and was hiding in paddy fields, she says. According to police,Amujao and two friends were on a scooter when the police asked them to stop,but they sped on and police opened fire; Amujao,who was sitting at the back,was shot while the others sped away, says Ito. If the police are to be believed,my son was killed simply because the others didnt stop. And they say they recovered arms from him,which is not possible. Sanasam David For a few months,Sanasam David,25,had been in the insurgent group UPPK,by his familys own admission. He disappeared this February and was found dead. According to his family,he had left the group long earlier. His elder brother Sanasam Brojen,29,says the family came to know of his death from a three-line brief in a local newspaper. The brief simply said an encounter had taken place,that Imphal West and Imphal East commandos had carried out the operation and found a grenade on his person, says Brojen. The family submitted a petition to the inquiry officer for details but the request was allegedly turned down. David,a converted Christian,used to work at construction sites. His wife has a baby,now seven months old. He got a job in the border town of Moreh. After he went,he disappeared. Three months later,we got a call from the UPPK saying they had David, says Brojen. He says another call came a month later. They told us to meet him in Moreh. We went but they never got in touch. Later,we came to know that David had not been cooperating with them. They had called us as part of a threat to kill us to get him to work. We didnt contact the police but got in touch with the rival Kuki National Army,which was in a ceasefire with the government. They negotiated with the Assam Rifles and managed to get David freed, adds Brojen. In February 2011,David came back home and resumed work as a labourer. The day he went missing a second time,he told his family he was going for a trip with some friends in the Assam Rifles. His brother says that in the evening,an Assam Rifles contact told the family there had been an encounter,and the planned trip had been cancelled. We have gathered that he was simply picked up from Lamlong Bazaar in Imphal. It doesnt make any sense, says Brojen. My brother wasnt interested in politics. He had a basic knowledge of insurgent groups,as much as anyone living in Manipur would have. Nongmaithem Michael On November 4,2008,Neena Ningombam lunched with her husband Nongmaithem Michael. At 3 pm,she says,he got a call and left for the shraddha ceremony for a friends father. At 3:32,her husband,who ran a small business in Imphal,called her to say that he had been picked up by police and that she should inform relatives so that they could secure his release. When I called him later,somebody else picked up and said he had gone to the toilet. Our family tried to locate him at various police stations,but couldnt. At 9 pm,news started flashing that a terrorist had been killed,with a photo lying on the ground holding a grenade. It was my husband, says Neena,now secretary of the group that has filed the petition. I attended public hearings where I told people of my husbands story and they told me theirs. After the police took no action,I approached the Gauhati High Court. They directed a district judge to undertake the inquiry. She quotes the district judge as saying on July 12 this year,I have decided that the husband of the petitioner,Nongmaitham Michael,was killed by the personnel of Manipur Police Commando,Imphal West,on 4-11-2008 at around 4:45 pm at Yenkaobung,Kameng,and not from the exchange of firing or encounter. Numbers & trends Babloo Loitangbam,who heads Human Rights Alerts in Manipur and is among the activists who have filed the petition,says extrajudicial killings peaked at 400-500 in 2008-09. This reduced as a number of cases were handed over to the CBI. In the first few months of 2012,the killings began again and we dont know why, says Loitangbam. According to a report brought out by the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur and the United Nations,there have been 18 extrajudicial killings between January and March. Between 1996-2007,then district and sessions judge C Upendra Singh had headed 12 judicial inquiries and every inquiry found security forces guilty,but no punitive action was taken,the report says. Loitangbam says the killing of innocents is possibly connected to gallantry awards. There is an incentive provided by police. It also assures promotions. The year these killings peaked,we got to know that 60 policemen received these awards, says Loitangbam,but he feels that even the incentives cannot explain this years spurt of killings. The report by the group,Manipur: a memorandum on extradjudicial,arbitrary or summary executions,includes the testimony of a retired police officer who says the distinctive features of these encounters are isolated locations,absence of casualties on the part of security forces,recovery of a few bullets or a 9mm pistol or hand grenades in most cases,the victim being taken away from home and killed elsewhere. The report notes a rising trend of accusations being made against Manipur Police commands rather than against the Army. Allegations include arbitrary killings for robbery. Home Minister G Gaikhangam says that in the six months that the new government has been in power,law and order has improved and the number of killings will therefore come down. Controlling insurgency is a difficult task. Sometimes it is impossible for a hunter to kill his prey without touching any leaves in the jungle. I dont rule out that such killings dont happen but I personally think most of these cases enumerated are probably lies, he says. Inputs by Dipankar Ghose in New Delhi
