Love, but no passage: What a killing changed for Meitei-Kuki couples

IMPHAL/CHURACHANDPUR: For months, Meitei–Kuki couples in the hills and plains of Manipur believed they had reached the safest point they were likely to get. Life had not returned to what it was before violence erupted in May 2023, but it had settled into something predictable — a fragile calm that was shaped by habit and caution. On Jan 21, that sense of predictability lay shattered. Mayanglambam Rishikanta Singh, a 31‑year‑old Meitei man who had been working in Nepal, was abducted and shot dead in Churachandpur. Singh had quietly entered the Kuki‑majority district on Dec 19 via Aizawl, Mizoram, to dodge the buffer‑zone checkpoints between Imphal and Churachandpur, kin close to Chingnu Haokip’s family said. He had come to see Chingnu, his fiancée, after she sought permission from local authorities and representatives of Kuki National Organisation — an umbrella body of Kuki insurgent outfits under the Suspension of Operation agreement — and had lived with her for nearly a month before the killing. Officials later confirmed Singh was abducted by armed militants from the Tuibong area and taken to a village under Henglep police station, where he was shot dead on camera.The chilling video circulated widely. It showed Singh kneeling with folded hands before armed men, prompting Churachandpur police to register a suo motu FIR. Chingnu was taken alongside him during the abduction but was beaten and thrown out of a moving vehicle, her family said. She was admitted to a trauma ward in Churachandpur, where doctors found her suffering from acute depression and shock. In the hospital, she would answer only with nods and could not hold on to what she ate, her loss too great to bear. A further terrible blow was yet to come: both sides of the ethnic divide ostracised her, with many accusing her of betrayal and circulating threats on social messaging groups.Chingnu has since been discharged from hospital, but is still in no condition to speak. Her family told TOI: "We do not want any more trouble”.The killing did not spill into fresh violence across Manipur as many feared. In Imphal and Churachandpur, schools stayed open. Offices functioned. Roads reopened intermittently. But something shifted.Across, in Meitei-majority Imphal valley, separation has been a defining condition since mid-2023 for Meitei–Kuki couples. Many were forced apart during evacuations, fleeing in opposite directions for safety. Over time, it became routine — marriages sustained through phone calls, reunions deferred without timelines. Late last year, there were faint signs that the worst might be over. Some couples began, carefully, to plan. The murder on Jan 21 shook everything up again. Mawaibam Bishorjit, 30, a Meitei man, and his wife Thaja Moirang, 27, a Kuki woman from Moreh, married in 2015. Bishorjit worked as a band member at wedding functions. The couple and their two kids — a three-year-old daughter, and an 11-year-old son — fled Moreh on the night of May 3, 2023, and have been living in a relief camp set up at Ideal Girls’ College in Imphal. “If the killing of Rishikanta had not happened, we probably would have continued to plan to return home,” Bishorjit said. “We want to go back, but there must be adequate security in Moreh,” Moirang added. “Without protection, it is not possible.”A 36-year-old Meitei schoolteacher in Imphal, separated from her Kuki husband since July 2023, said she had resumed conversations she once believed were closed chapters — where they might live, which school their daughter could attend. “We were talking about when, not if,” she said. Her husband, an electrician based near Churachandpur, now discourages even tentative plans. “He keeps saying, ‘We wait'.” In the 65km between Imphal and Churachandpur lies a network of buffer zones that have become part of daily calculation for separated couples. Officially meant to prevent clashes, they function in practice as lived borders — shaped by identity checks and ethnic profiling. A 42-year-old Meitei govt clerk, whose Kuki wife has been living with her parents in the hills since 2023, put it simply: “On paper, it’s a few hours’ drive. In reality, it’s a line you don’t cross unless you must.”The drive from Imphal to Churachandpur — which once took a little over an hour — is punctuated by at least seven checkpoints where identity cards are checked and names, Aadhaar numbers, and vehicle details recorded. People know where they are not allowed to go. Meiteis do not enter Churachandpur. Kukis do not travel into the valley. The road exists. Passage does not.Thogjam Haokip, 70, a retired Kuki church pastor, has been married to his Meitei wife Kim, 50, for nearly three decades. Their marriage predates the conflict. “We are not afraid. But we are not blind," Kim said. We often think about how things would have turned out had we been living in another place. Would we be safe elsewhere? The thought gnaws at us.”