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NIA makes arrest in transnational conspiracy case
The accused, identified as Seiminlun Gangte, has been taken into custody. The federal anti-terror probe agency registered a case on its own on July 19 to probe the conspiracy.
New Delhi:
The National Investigation Agency on Saturday arrested a suspect from Churachandpur district in Manipur, who was allegedly part of a transnational conspiracy by terrorists based in Myanmar and Bangladesh to wage war against India by exploiting the ethnic unrest in Manipur.
The accused, identified as Seiminlun Gangte, has been taken into custody. The federal anti-terror probe agency registered a case on its own on July 19 to probe the conspiracy.
“Investigation revealed that Myanmar and Bangladesh based militant groups have entered into a conspiracy with a section of militant leaders in India to indulge in incidents of violence with an intention to drive a wedge between different ethnic groups and to wage war against the government of India,” the agency said in a statement. “And for this purpose, the aforementioned leadership have been providing funds to procure arms, ammunition and other types of terrorist hardware which are being sourced both, from across the border, as well as from other terrorist outfits active in northeastern states of India to stoke the current ethnic strife in Manipur.”
Gangte has been brought to Delhi and will be produced before a court in the national capital, it said.
The arrest comes days after the agency took into custody a trained militant cadre named Moirangthem Anand Singh in the same case. Singh was arrested on September 24 and brought to Delhi. He was arrested by Manipur police on September 16 with four others for allegedly wearing camouflaged uniforms and possessing an Insas rifle, a self-loading rifle, two .303 rifles and multiple magazines. He is allegedly a former cadre of the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur.
Clashes in Manipur broke out on May 3 in Churachandpur town after tribal groups called for protests against a proposed tweak to the state’s reservation matrix, granting scheduled tribe status to the Meitei community. Violence quickly engulfed the state where ethnic fault lines run deep, displacing tens of thousands of people who fled burning homes and neighbourhoods into jungles, often across state borders.
The clashes have virtually partitioned the state between the dominant Meitei community that lives in the plains and constitutes 53% of the state’s population, and the tribal Kuki group, which lives in the hill districts and makes up 16% of the state. At least 175 people have died and another 50,000 displaced.
