Warring Manipur groups fighting via quadcopters

New Delhi, July 9

Warring Meiteis, mostly concentrated in Imphal valley, and tribal Kukis, mainly on the hillside, in strife-torn Manipur have widely been found using quadcopters to identify locations of each other to launch attacks, security officials said today.

The drones, the officials said, had thus been proving to be both a boon and a bane. Army and Assam Rifles personnel are deploying drones to rescue people. An official said the security personnel located armed assailants using quadcopters in Kakching district of South East Manipur and then rescued nearly 2,000 civilians. While the security men engaged the assailants in a fight, other teams rescued the civilians in vehicles using a different route from Serou to Pangaltabi, the official said.

Another official said they had noticed the use of quadcopters by the warring groups to know each other’s location. “There have been places like Phougakchao, Kangvai Bazar and Torbung Bazar in the southwest part of Manipur where the quadcopters have been put to extensive use by the two communities where their villages face each other,” the official said.

Noting that counter-measures were being put in place to deal with this, the security forces have created buffer zones at these places to keep the agitated communities away from each other, the official said. Despite the presence of security forces, Loibol in Senapati district and Leimaram in Bishnupur district have been the hotspots of violence, he said.

“The mistrust for each other has led to the warring communities to use aerial vehicles to monitor their rival’s movements and location,” the officials said. Since quadcopters are freely available in market, security forces often encounter intermittent firing as both groups take shots at each other’s flying objects, they said. TNS

Aerial clashes

• Quadcopters being used by Meiteis and Kukis where their villages face each other
• The warring communities ascertain their rival’s movements before launching an attack
• Security personnel too used drones to rescue nearly 2,000 civilians from armed assailants