Manipur: How a Litan brawl in February opened a Naga-Kuki front

The Naga-Kuki clashes that have spread across Manipur's hill districts this year began with a scuffle on a dark village road in Ukhrul district, according to a detailed reconstruction published by the Hindustan Times on Sunday.

The newspaper reports that the violence between the two communities has now claimed 65 lives, including the three men killed in Noney district on Saturday. That takes the overall toll from ethnic violence in Manipur over the past three years to at least 363, with thousands displaced.

The night of February 7

The trigger, HT says, was an altercation in Litan, a mixed village of about 192 houses and nearly 1,000 people around 39 km from Imphal, which had stayed out of the Meitei-Kuki conflict that broke out in 2023. On the evening of February 7, a torch shone in the faces of a group of men led to a fight. A 48-year-old Naga man was knocked to the ground, suffered a broken jaw and spent about two months at RIMS in Imphal.

Naga and Kuki witnesses who spoke to HT gave sharply different versions of who provoked whom. Both families say they first tried to settle the matter through customary means rather than the police: under local tribal custom, the person who draws blood owes the victim an animal for sacrifice.

From settlement talks to arson

That attempt collapsed the next morning. Each side accuses the other of bringing armed militants into the village and of starting the burning of homes. Both agree that Naga and Kuki houses in Litan were set on fire between February 8 and 10. The village is now split in two, with CRPF and BSF personnel deployed between the communities.

A police officer at Litan told the paper that finding out who started the fight was no longer the priority. The focus, he said, was to stop the villagers from killing each other, since both sides have heavily armed groups.

A pattern across the hills

The same pattern of arson and central forces holding a buffer line spread to other districts. Clashes were reported from Kamjong and Kangpokpi in late February, and on March 11 the bodies of two abducted Kuki men were found. Violence with casualties on both sides has continued since.

Community leaders told HT the brawl only exposed older tensions. A Kuki Inpi spokesperson said Kukis in Naga-dominated areas had faced attacks before February and claimed Litan was originally Kuki land. The Naga Tangkhul Litan body rejected this and said the village is ancestral Naga land.

Competing land claims between the two communities led to clashes between 1993 and 1998 that left about 750 people dead. The underlying disputes over land and boundaries were never fully settled.