After a week of uncertainty and tension following the barbaric triple murder of SDO Kasom Khullen, Dr. Thingnam Kishan and two of his subordinates, official driver, A Rajen Sharma and mandal Y Token by assailants who everybody knew who to suspect but never were able to with justification pinpoint the allegation, the first stage of the matter has somewhat been sealed. The NSCN(IM) has now owned up that one of its commanding officers, Lt Col H Nighshen, of the organisation’s Kiusumong Battalion, was behind the unspeakable crime, albeit without the authorisation of his higher authorities. The sensitivity to public pressure deserves appreciation, so too the organisation’s courage to own up to the crime. However, just this much concession cannot exonerate it from all responsibilities or guilt. It must now demonstrate that it is capable of putting its worth where its mouth is. It had promised penalty to any of its cadres if found involved in the savagery, now it is up to the organisation to show it meant what it pledged it would do as a matter of principle. Only this would win it some degree of redemption in the eyes of the people, especially of the Meiteis who the killers seem so vindictively to have targeted. It will be recalled there were six people including the SDO who were kidnapped. Three of these were Meiteis and three Tangkhuls. The three Meiteis were butchered and the three Tangkhuls were let off. This will need extremely strong justification to prove there was nothing communal about the crime. Again, the victims were left in the vicinity of the Taphou Kuki village, further adding to the sense of a very sinister intrigue being played out.
From the organisational perspective too, the NSCN(IM) cannot possibly treat the matter lightly even if it comes to consider the killings are with justification. For one, as per its own admission, the killings had no official sanction of the organisation. The obvious implication is, this particular unit which was involved in the crime, or perhaps there are more such units, seems to have been operating independently of any centralised authority of the organisation. If this is the case, apart from the danger it poses to the general public, it also does not reflect well on the organisational health of the NSCN(IM) and its armed wing that it calls the Naga Army. The adverse consequences of the withering away of central control or authority in a militaristic organisation needs no further convincing at least in Manipur, which has witnessed some underground organisations splinter into dozens of armed bands.
Even if the NSCN(IM) does what is expected of it and punishes the killer and his accomplices fittingly, there is much more to be pursued in the case. One of these have to do with the allegation that the deputy commissioner of the district has always hobnobbed with the killers. This allegation comes from beyond the grave. According to what the bereaved wife of Dr. Kishan told the media, her late husband had always been unhappy about his immediate boss’s conduct on this count. From circumstantial evidences, it also does seem there was plenty of bad blood generated in the distribution of work charges under the Central government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, NREGS. The picture that comes across from the information so far is that of an upright officer walking into a corruption den and paying the ultimate price for trying to mediate and intervene in a high-stake game of plundering official booty. The matter needs focused investigation for as the saying goes, dead men do not lie. There is also the matter of the ambiguity of the Government of India’s truce with NSCN(IM). In the last list of banned organisations the GOI published, the organisation, together with a number of Kuki underground groups were conspicuously missing. Moreover, the NSCN(IM) truce also officially exists only in the state of Nagaland. As to how all this would translate in legal terms is a matter of bewilderment and outrage for the lay public. The apprehension is also that this ambiguity would be used to put up a smokescreen behind which the murderers and their accomplices, including government officials, are allowed to slip away. This has happened before. The Lungnila Elizabeth case, the murder of two school going children, Hrinii Hubert and Moheni Martin in Senapati are just some of these. On this, it is the Union government which must explain.