Sehken/Tuibuong, Churachandpur (Manipur): Missing for close to eight months, Khamajahau’s family finally saw him on Wednesday, December 20. His body was lifeless, mutilated, and embalmed. It was handed to his family by authorities in Churachandpur district.Since May 3 when ethnic violence involving Kuki-Zo community and Meiteis swept Manipur, 32-year-old Khamajahau who is a resident of Churachandpur and worked at a cement store, had been missing. His family filed a missing person report.The months-long search ended on December 9 when the family was informed by authorities that Khamajahau’s body was among the 87 slain persons who were kept at different mortuaries of the state before being handed over to their families.The graves at the Matryrs Cemetery in Sehken village of Churachandpur district. Photo: By arrangement.Speaking with The Wire, Chinghuaikin, his cousin, said that his family had been searching for him in every possible place, including relief camps that have sprung up for the victims of the violence that has killed nearly 200 people and injured thousands.“It is a blessing that our martyr has finally come home,” Chinghuaikin said, “It breaks my heart to see him go away like this. It happened so suddenly that even now I can’t believe he is no longer with us.”Authorities said 87 victims of violence in this northeastern state were handed to their families on Wednesday amid tight security arrangements in the worst-hit Churachandpur district where additional Rapid Action Force and central paramilitary troopers were deployed to ensure calm.Authorities had also imposed restrictions under Section 144 prohibiting the gathering of four or more people while mobile internet service was partially blocked amid fears of law and order breakdown.The restrictions will remain in force till February 18, 2024, officials said. The delay in returning the bodies of the victims to their families had kept the district on the edge over the last seven months.Local volunteers wait to lower the coffins into the graves at the Matryrs Cemetery in Sehken village of Churachandpur district. Photo: By arrangement.Month-old boy among those killedAmong the victims, the youngest was a month-old boy named Isaac. According to a local volunteer, Isaac and his family, who hail from Pherzawl district, had shifted to Mother Care Clinic in Imphal when he was barely 15-days-old.“The baby was not well and they wanted to save him. However, it turned out that the baby was not a priority for the doctors in Imphal who left him unattended. His parents escaped the valley of death but the baby didn’t,” a volunteer, who doesn’t want to be identified, said at the burial ground in Sehken.Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF), a local group which has documented the violence has claimed that eight more victims of the clashes continue to remain missing, some of whom are believed to have been allegedly chopped into pieces.Their body parts have not been recovered by authorities.On Wednesday morning, following the handing over ceremony involving local authorities, a solemn event was organised by local volunteer groups at Peace Ground in Tuibuong, some 65 km from the capital Imphal, where 87 coffins of slain men, women and children were placed in a row in front of a stage.Thousand of people had turned up to participate in the last rites of the 87 killed in the ethnic violence that broke out in Manipur in May. Photo: By arrangement.A ceremony for the deadOne by one, the distraught family members arrived at the ground and took seats behind the coffins, on endless rows of plastic chairs facing the stage. The grounds were crowded with thousands of people – young and old, men and women – wearing black clothing as a mark of protest.The ceremony started with a prayer session followed by choir performances which punctuated emotional messages and fiery speeches commemorating the ‘martyrdom’ of people from the Kuki-Zo community.Hundreds of volunteers were seen distributing water and helping the affected families in reaching near the stage where seats were reserved for them.After the ceremony was over, the bodies were taken to Martyrs Cemetery in Sehken village, some eight kilometres from Tuibuong, in what looked like a festival of sorts.Hundreds of private cars, bikes, trucks and even heavy dumpers filled with enthusiastic youngsters and grieving family members and relatives joined the long procession. Along the road, locals had made arrangements at several places outside their shops and residences for the convenience of commuters who had come from different parts of the state to attend the burial ceremony.At the Martyrs Cemetery, situated atop a hill, the aggrieved family members spent some solemn moments with their loved ones as more speeches and choir performances followed to commemorate their ‘sacrifices’.Local volunteers keep a watch while family members prepare for the last rites of 87 victims. Photo: By arrangement.‘Justice is dead’“It is a great honour to be here,” said Khupdinglian, 17, a student, who had come from Tuibuong to attend the burial ceremony, “A genocide was planned against our people so that our land can be occupied by outsiders. But these martyrs are proof that all those plans have failed.”Emotions ran high as the sun prepared its descent behind the lush hills in Sehken and the time for the burial neared. While the male family members largely restrained their emotions, most of the women and some children were seen breaking down and crying beside the coffins.An old woman took out a tracksuit from a plastic bag and offered it to the coffin, her son’s last wish, expressed over phone, unfulfilled. Two young sisters were grieving and shedding silent tears over the coffin of their only brother.Then, the loudspeaker at the cemetery came to life again and the speaker urged all the participants to sit down as a ‘gun salute’ was going to be offered to the “martyrs of Kuki-Zo” community.With their guns held tightly against their shoulders and nozzles pointing towards the sky, dozens of men and women lined along one side of the cemetery pulled the triggers. A heart-piercing chorus of wails and screams rent the air, intensifying the grief of the families while the crowd raised more slogans.After the gun salute, all the 87 coffins, now draped in white, were lowered in the graves while an earthmover machine was brought in to help the exhausted workers, who had been digging since morning, in levelling the ground.On the long and dusty road back to Tuibuong, a child’s effigy was dangling from a highway signboard which read: ’Justice is dead’.
