Five Kuki-Zo Men Killed as Manipur’s Ethnic War Widens

Five Kuki-Zo men have been killed in two separate episodes in India’s northeastern state of Manipur, exposing how a conflict that displaced more than 60,000 people has widened rather than ended.

Three men died on Saturday in a gunfight in Noney district. Police described the attackers only as “unidentified armed miscreants.” On Sunday, security forces recovered the bodies of two Kuki men who had disappeared earlier in the week in Kangpokpi district.

The Kuki Inpi Manipur, an umbrella civil-society group, accused fighters linked to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah and the Zeliangrong United Front-Kamson faction of carrying out the Noney attack. Those groups have not publicly accepted responsibility, and police have not announced who fired the fatal shots. The distinction matters: an allegation cannot become a fact simply because it fits the region’s established lines of conflict.

The killings do establish something more important. Manipur’s authorities have failed to stop armed groups from turning communal borders into killing grounds.

ARCHIVE — Khouphum Valley in Noney district, Manipur, October 24, 2024. Photo: Haoreima / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

A war with more than one front

Manipur’s violence is often reduced to the confrontation between the mostly Hindu Meitei population in the Imphal Valley and predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo communities in the surrounding hills. That war erupted in May 2023 after a dispute over economic benefits and public-sector job quotas. More than 300 people have since been killed, and tens of thousands remain displaced.

But the latest deaths reveal another armed fault line. Kuki and Naga organizations have competing territorial claims in the hill districts. Reuters reported that the current cycle intensified after the alleged assault of a Naga man in February. Three Kuki pastors were killed in May, followed by retaliatory abductions and killings by both communities.

Each episode hardens the map of segregation. Roads become borders. Villages become outposts. Families in relief camps remain unable to return home because the state cannot guarantee that a journey across another community’s territory will end safely.

The killing of the three men in Noney triggered protests in Kangpokpi, while massive rallies in Imphal and Senapati made competing demands over ceasefire arrangements between Kuki armed groups and the Indian government. The Economic Times reported that protesters in Imphal called for peace, justice, safe resettlement and the scrapping of the Suspension of Operations agreement.

Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh told the rally: “Community-centric ideas cannot bring integrity, a peaceful atmosphere or economic progress.” His words identify the disease while avoiding the state’s responsibility to treat it.

ARCHIVE — The chairman of the Kuki-Zo Council addresses a rally in January 2026. Photo: Ginza Vualzong / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.

Protection cannot remain a slogan

Human Rights Watch warned in September that the authorities had failed to prevent Kuki-Naga violence from escalating. The organization documented blockades that restricted food, fuel and medical supplies, and said justice for abuses was necessary to prevent further attacks.

That failure sits inside the longer collapse of public authority in Manipur. Police weapons were looted during the 2023 violence. Communities formed armed “village volunteer” networks. Political agreements meant to contain insurgencies now overlap with ethnic demands, local militias and contested districts. Every unresolved pact creates another excuse for leaders to manage the conflict instead of disarming it.

The victims disappear inside competing communal narratives: one side calls them defenders, another calls them militants, and officials use neutral phrases that obscure who controlled the road or who failed to protect it. Their identities matter, but the state’s duty does not change with ethnicity. It must investigate the killings, protect witnesses and prosecute those responsible.

New Delhi and Manipur’s government also owe displaced families more than declarations of normalcy. Safe return requires restored policing, functioning courts, open transport routes and political negotiations that do not reward armed control of territory. Without those conditions, resettlement becomes a wager with human lives.

Five deaths will not command the international attention given to India’s wars of diplomacy or trade. They should. Manipur shows what happens when mass displacement becomes permanent and a government learns to live with segregated violence. Saturday’s gunfire and Sunday’s recoveries are not an isolated flare-up. They are the latest proof that the war never ended—and that its boundaries are still expanding.

Sources: Reuters; The Economic Times; Times of India; and Human Rights Watch.