Five killed in fresh ethnic violence in Manipur as Kuki-Naga tensions flare again
Police in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur say five men from the Kuki community were killed in two separate incidents over the weekend, amid mass protests over the ceasefire arrangement between Kuki armed groups and the Indian state.
Five people have been killed in two separate incidents in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur, police said on Sunday, 1 November 2026, as fresh ethnic violence erupted in a region already scarred by years of conflict between communities. All five of the dead were men from the Kuki community, according to police statements reported by Reuters, and the killings have added to an already tense atmosphere in the state.
The first incident took place on Saturday in Noney district, where three Kuki men were killed in an exchange of gunfire involving what police described as “unidentified armed miscreants”. The Daily Pioneer, citing The Indian Express, located the shooting at Kekru Naga village in Noney district and described the dead as three Kuki-Zo men killed in an exchange of fire involving unidentified armed groups.
The second incident came to light on Sunday morning in Kangpokpi district, where security personnel recovered the bodies of two other Kuki men who had gone missing earlier in the week. The recovery followed a search operation launched after the men disappeared, according to a second police statement. The Daily Pioneer, citing Hindustan Times, identified the two men as Paoginlal Hangshing, aged 20, and Tinginlun Chongloi, aged 21.
A leading Kuki organisation has blamed the killings on Naga separatist groups. Kuki Inpi Manipur, described as the community’s apex body, called the killings a “direct unprovoked assault… in their homeland”, Reuters reported. The Daily Pioneer said the body alleged that the killings involved the NSCN-IM and ZUF(K), a claim that has not been independently verified in the reports published so far. No response from the groups named has been reported in those accounts.
The killings did not happen in isolation. Reuters reported that they came amid mass protests attended by hundreds of thousands of people in the state capital, Imphal, and other areas, demanding the abrogation of a ceasefire arrangement between Kuki armed groups and the Indian state. The protests underline how the latest deaths feed into a wider and long-running dispute about armed groups, ceasefires and the security arrangements that govern the state.
The Kuki and Naga communities, both predominantly Christian, have a long history of conflict over competing claims to ethnic homelands in Manipur’s remote hill areas. Reuters traced the latest round of Kuki-Naga fighting to February this year, when a Naga man was allegedly assaulted by men from the Kuki community. In May, the killing of three Kuki pastors, allegedly by Naga armed groups, triggered a series of retaliatory abductions and killings by both sides, according to the same account.
That Kuki-Naga tension sits within a still larger conflict that began in May 2023, when violence between the predominantly Hindu Meitei community and the Kuki community broke out over economic benefits and job quotas. More than 300 people have been killed in that wider conflict and more than 60,000 people remain displaced in temporary shelters, Reuters reported. Manipur has therefore been dealing with overlapping fault lines rather than a single dispute, and an incident on one front can quickly raise tensions on another.
What is known so far rests largely on police statements and community accounts, and several important questions remain unanswered. The police statements do not name the attackers in the Noney shooting, describing them only as unidentified armed miscreants, and the circumstances in which the two Kangpokpi men died after going missing earlier in the week have not been publicly explained. Whether the two incidents are directly connected, beyond involving victims from the same community in the same weekend, is also not yet clear from the published reports.
The immediate consequences are likely to be felt first in security and in public order. Search and investigation work is continuing, community organisations are pressing their case publicly, and the mass protests over the ceasefire arrangement suggest that the political argument about how Manipur is policed will intensify rather than fade. Past cycles in the state show how quickly localised killings can produce retaliation, and both communities and the authorities will be watching for any sign of that pattern repeating.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrow but serious: three men shot dead in Noney on Saturday, two men found dead in Kangpokpi on Sunday after going missing, a Kuki body blaming Naga separatist outfits, and a state in which hundreds of thousands have just taken to the streets over the ceasefire question. How the authorities investigate, and whether they can establish who was responsible, will shape what happens next in a state where trust between communities and the state has already been badly damaged.
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