Three people from the Kuki-Zo community were killed in a gunfight between rival armed groups in Manipur's Noney district on Saturday morning, police said, hours before thousands of protesters brought the state capital Imphal to a standstill with a rally demanding the end of the Suspension of Operations agreement with Kuki insurgent groups.
The exchange of fire broke out at Kekru Naga village in the forested hills of Noney district, around 9 am on Saturday, October 31, and continued for several hours, officials said. Three people died in the firing. The village lies in the Nungba subdivision, close to Taijeikaiphun, in a Rongmei Naga-majority hill district roughly 60 kilometres from Imphal.
Accounts of who fired first differ sharply, and no official statement from security agencies had confirmed the identities of those killed or the exact sequence of events by Saturday evening. Local reports from the area said Naga village guards clashed with suspected Kuki militants near Taijeikaiphun between 8 am and 1 pm, and that three rifles were recovered from the site.
The Kuki Inpi Manipur, the apex body of the Kuki community, condemned the deaths in a statement and alleged that cadres of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah and the Zomi Revolutionary Front (K) were behind what it called an unprovoked assault. It demanded justice, accountability and immediate state action, and accused the authorities of complicity through deliberate negligence.
The killings came at a moment of already acute tension in Manipur, where a separate confrontation between Naga and Kuki-Zo communities has been escalating through 2026 alongside the longer-running Meitei-Kuki conflict that erupted in May 2023. On October 19, three Meitei villagers collecting firewood in the Sunurok hills were ambushed and killed, an incident that set off days of protests across the Imphal Valley.
On Saturday morning, a fourth Meitei woodcutter from that incident, Sorokhaibam Ibomcha, succumbed to his injuries at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Imphal, taking the death toll from the October 19 attack to four.
By mid-morning, Imphal was the scene of a mass mobilisation. Thousands of Meitei and Naga protesters marched through the capital, bringing traffic to a halt, in a rally jointly organised by the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity, the Joint Tribe Council Manipur, the Foothill Naga Co-ordination Committee, the Naga Peoples' Union of Imphal, the Inpui Naga Union and the Naga Humanitarian Aids Committee.
The United Naga Council, the apex body of Naga tribes in the state, endorsed the march, and Naga civil bodies held supporting marches in Chandel and Senapati districts.
The protesters' demands were specific. They sought an end to what they described as proxy warfare, the abrogation of the Suspension of Operations pact with Kuki armed groups, the dismantling of designated camps, verification of cadres' weapons and the withdrawal of the Assam Rifles from Manipur. Organisers said Kuki insurgent groups had repeatedly violated the ground rules of the agreement by operating outside their designated camps, a charge Kuki groups deny.
The Suspension of Operations agreement, first signed in 2008 between the Centre, the Manipur government and Kuki-Zo armed groups, has been at the centre of the state's politics for years.
It was renewed in September 2025 with revised conditions, including relocating seven designated camps away from conflict-sensitive areas, reducing the number of camps, moving weapons to the nearest Central Reserve Police Force or Border Security Force camps and stricter verification of cadres. The pact expired on September 4, 2026, without renewal, according to reports, leaving its future uncertain and fuelling the anger visible on Imphal's streets on Saturday.
The convergence of Naga and Meitei civil society groups is itself a significant development. The Naga-Kuki confrontation intensified in February 2026 after an altercation in the Litan-Sareikhong area of Ukhrul district, and what began as a local dispute has since hardened into a separate and increasingly deadly conflict in the hill districts.
In July, a Naga blockade triggered by the killing of six civilians, allegedly by Kuki groups, choked supplies into the hills for more than a month. In recent weeks, armed groups have been reported involved in shootings, hostage-taking, arson and highway blockades in parts of the state.
Manipur's political leadership has appealed for calm. Chief Minister Khemchand called for strengthening unity and said community-centric ideas cannot bring peace, a message delivered on October 31, which the Union government has observed since 2014 as Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, or National Unity Day, marking the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The appeal, however, sits uneasily alongside the competing claims now hardening on the ground: Kuki organisations say their village volunteers were attacked without provocation, while Naga and Meitei groups say their communities have borne the brunt of militant violence for months.
The immediate trigger for Saturday's rally was the October 19 killing, but the mobilisation also reflects a deeper frustration with the security arrangement in the hills. At least eight Naga MLAs have written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah demanding the immediate abrogation of the tripartite Suspension of Operations agreements with Kuki-Zo armed groups.
Naga leaders have also pointed the finger at the family of Deputy Chief Minister Nemcha Kipgen, whose husband Thangboi Kipgen heads the Kuki National Front (President) faction, recently renamed the Thadou National Front, a signatory to the agreement. Kipgen has previously asked all communities to remain calm while condemning civilian killings, and her husband's group is among those covered by the pact.
For the people of Noney district, Saturday's gunfight is a reminder of how quickly local clashes can spiral. The forested hill villages around Nungba have seen repeated confrontations in recent weeks, and residents say Taijeikaiphun village had come under attack from multiple directions since October 29.
With the Suspension of Operations pact lapsed, the designated camps in legal limbo and trust between communities at a low ebb, security officials face a difficult task in preventing the next incident.
What happens next will depend on whether the Centre and the state government can restore a credible security framework in the hills. The protesters in Imphal want the camps dismantled and the pact scrapped. Kuki organisations want protection for their villages and action against those they blame for the killings.
Until an arrangement both sides can accept is found, Manipur's hill districts look set to remain on edge, with each fresh killing threatening to pull more communities into a conflict that has already claimed far too many lives.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, The Times of India and Outlook.)