CoTU urges Home Minister to halt the issuance of additional arms & ammunition to Meitei police personnel
Committee on Tribal Unity, or the CoTU, Sadar Hills apprised the Union Home Minister of the prevailing situation of Manipur urging him to intervene to halt the issuance of additional arms and ammunition to the Meitei police personnel.
CoTU's seeking the Union Home Minister's intervention came after an MPS officer, in-charge of a Special Commando Unit wrote to the Additional Director General of Police (Law & Order) requesting the requisition of additional ammunition given the prevailing law and order.
Manipur police officer, Krishnatombi Singh, MPS, who is also in-charge of a Special Commando Unit, in his letter to the ADGP (L/O), Manipur on December 30 listed the following ammunition for requisition, 10,000 number of 7.62 LMG live rounds, 20,000 of INSAS live rounds, 17,000 of AK-47 live rounds, 150 of 51 Mortar live rounds (H.E. bomb), and 3000 of 303 live rounds.
The Committee on Tribal Unity, Sadar Hills appealed to the ADGP (L/O) not to issue the requested ammunition since it posed a serious threat to the existence of the minority Kuki-Zo community.
CoTU also pointed out that it is an open secret that the Meitei police commandos have been at the forefront of attacks on Kuki-Zo villages and areas from the beginning of the current state-sponsored ethnic cleansing pogrom.
«If these ammunitions are issued, it will surely be shared with the radicalized Meitei militias and the valley-based insurgent groups, to attack and kill fellow citizens», it added.
It further recalled that the majority of the 6000 advanced weapons and lakhs of rounds of ammunition seized from the armouries of various police stations and Indian Reserve Battalions by radicalized Meitei militias in collusion with Meitei police are still at large.
