Around 650 weapons surrendered in Manipur last week on governor’s appeal

NEW DELHI: As many as 650 weapons were surrendered in Manipur over the past week in response to governor

Ajay Bhalla

’s appeal for

voluntary surrender

of all

illegal weapons

, including those looted from armouries in the wake of outbreak of

ethnic violence

in May 2023. This has raised hopes that Manipuri people may be more receptive to the appeal, particularly in view of peace having sustained in the state over the past few months, unbroken even by the exit of N Biren Singh government and imposition of President’s rule.
It is this hope that prompted Bhalla to extend the deadline for the voluntary surrender of looted and other weapons to March 6. The extension came ahead of a detailed review of the situation in Manipur by home minister Amit Shah here on Saturday, where Bhalla, heads of various security forces deployed in the state and the state police chief will be present.
The strategy that appears to have worked this time with the rebels — who were cold to previous appeals to turn in the looted weapons — is the government’s outreach to village heads and civil society leaders across Manipur to echo Bhalla’s appeal to their respective communities and warn them of the consequences of ignoring it. The ‘consequences’, which will kick in after the deadline is past, include police/security raids in their villages and tough, criminal action against any youth/rebel still in possession of looted or illegal weapons.
“Right now there is assurance that the youths will not be penalised if they surrender the ill-gotten weapons. Besides, the option given to them to hand over their weapons to the village head or community leader, rather than going directly to the police, ensures that they don’t get identified by the police and face possible action or profiling at a later stage,” a senior Manipur govt officer told TOI.

As many as 6,020 arms were looted after ethnic clashes broke out in Manipur in 2023. While nearly 3,900 weapons have been recovered by the police and other security forces so far in raids and searches, these also include sophisticated arms that the Manipuri insurgents had from before.
Surrenders of looted arms in Manipur have been negligible but for the past one week, with people belonging to Valley areas not confident of turning in the weapons they had looted to purportedly defend themselves against ethnic violence by the 'armed' members of the rival community. The fact that the suspension of operations (SOO) pact between the govt and Kuki-Zo insurgent groups, which allows the latter to retain their weapons with certain conditions, has not been renewed, only added to the rival community’s reluctance to let go of their weapons.