November 2024 was the month the dead became evidence: six Meitei civilians taken from a relief camp in Jiribam, and the autopsies that followed.[119][115]
The audio-tapes controversy of August reached the Supreme Court the same month.[114]
AFSPA returned to six police-station limits on the valley's fringe.[126]
And the first serious public talk of President's Rule entered the record.[122]
On 7 November, a Hmar tribal village in Jiribam district, about 7 km from the district headquarters, was attacked around 9 p.m.[124]
A gunfight lasted about an hour; the police confirmed the gunfight and arson.[124]
The Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum (ITLF), a Kuki-Zo organisation, claimed the attackers shot and captured a 31-year-old woman and mother of three, Zosangkim Hmar, before burning her alive, and that 17 houses and three stores were burned down.[124]
A senior police officer told The Hindu: "We do not have any report on any death in the attack"; a forensic team was sent to the village.[124]
The Thadou Community International condemned the attack on Zairawn by "suspected Meitei militants"; the Kuki Inpi demanded a probe.[124]
The Hindu's recap put the crisis dead at 250 and displaced at least 60,000 since May 2023.[124]
On 11 November, armed militants attacked a CRPF post at Jakuradhor and a police station at Borobekra in Jiribam.[118]
Police said ten armed militants were killed in "retaliatory fire".[118]
The Kuki-Zo Council, a civil society group in Churachandpur, put the figure at 11, claiming the dead were "Kuki-Zo village volunteers", and called for a "total shutdown" the next day.[118]
During the operation, six members of a Meitei family — three women and three children — were abducted from a relief camp in the Borobekra area.[115]
Their bodies were later found in the Jiri river (Jiribam) and the Barak river (Assam's Cachar).[115][116]
ITNE, citing the government, described the killings as premeditated and said the NIA was looking into the case.[115]
The discovery of the bodies triggered valley-wide anger.[128]
On 16-17 November mobs ransacked and set fire to properties of public representatives across Imphal East, Imphal West and Bishnupur.[128]
Twenty-three people were arrested; a total curfew was imposed and internet and mobile data services suspended for two days.[128]
The Security Adviser, Kuldiep Singh, later said 32 people had been arrested for the arson and vandalism at legislators' and ministers' properties.[121]
On 18 November, the NIA took over three related cases — the 8 November murder of a woman at Jiribam, the 11 November attack on the CRPF post, and the 11 November burning of houses and killing of a civilian at Borobekra — after a Ministry of Home Affairs directive transferred them from the state police.[116]
The same day, the National People's Party (NPP), led by Conrad Sangma, withdrew the support of its seven MLAs from the BJP-led government, saying the administration had failed to manage the ethnic violence.[116]
The government was expected to remain stable with 37 BJP MLAs plus smaller allies in the 60-member assembly.[116]
On 24 November, The Hindu's Vijaita Singh reported the first autopsy results.[119]
The three examined members of the family "were shot multiple times before their bodies were dumped in a river".[119]
A 3-year-old boy had a bullet wound on his chin and his right eye was "missing".[119]
ITNE's same-day report of the same three autopsies put the toddler at 2.5 years, recording a bullet wound to the face and stab injuries.[115]
ITNE reported the 25-year-old woman shot three times in the back of the chest, and the 68-year-old grandmother with five bullet wounds (skull, chest, abdomen, arm).[115]
Age figures differ between the two outlets — 3 vs 2.5 years; 68 (ITNE) vs 60 (PTI) for the grandmother — and are shown here per-source, not merged.[119][115][120]
The PTI report of 28 November completed the set, from post-mortems at Silchar Medical College Hospital in Assam.[120]
A 10-month-old infant had a bullet injury to the left knee and both eyeballs missing.[120]
A 31-year-old woman had three chest and one abdominal gunshot wound; her 8-year-old daughter died from a fatal bullet wound.[120]
Vaginal smears in both women's examinations were negative for spermatozoa.[120]
ITNE had separately called the infant "eight-month old" — another per-source discrepancy.[115]
The same report documented two elderly men killed in the 11 November attack, found charred on 12 November.[120]
It also carried an internal error — its lead says the abductees disappeared after a gunfight "on November 17", while its own recap and every other source say November 11.[120]
The reports noted approximate time of death as 3-5 days before the bodies reached Silchar, and cause-of-death opinions were pending chemical analysis.[120]
Two features of this record deserve flagging.[119][115]
First, the documented, verified pattern is gunshot wounds and blunt trauma — while sexual assault was checked for and not found in the two adult women examined.[120]
Second, the autopsy narrative entered the record on the same day (24 November) in both a national desk piece (Hindu, Vijaita Singh, New Delhi) and a regional newsroom (ITNE).[119][115]
The story was being handled institutionally, not as a police blotter.[119]
On 14 November, the Union Home Ministry — not the state government — reimposed AFSPA, declaring six police station limits in five districts "disturbed areas": Sekmai and Lamsang (Imphal West), Lamlai (Imphal East), Jiribam, Moirang (Bishnupur) and Leimakhong (Kangpokpi), effective to 31 March 2025.[126]
The Act had been withdrawn from these areas in April 2022 by the Manipur government.[126]
The MHA noted "intermittent firing" continued on the fringes of Bishnupur-Churachandpur, Imphal East-Kangpokpi-Imphal West and Jiribam, with "several instances of active participation of insurgent groups".[126]
A senior official explained the reimposition as covering the fringe or buffer zones where Kuki-Zo and Meitei villages converge.[126]
After revocation in the valley, the Army had to wait for civil assistance while armed groups moved across jurisdictions.[126]
Ten Kuki MLAs — including seven from the ruling BJP-led alliance — responded on 21 November by demanding AFSPA be extended to the entire state.[127]
They wanted recovery of what they called the "more than 6,000 sophisticated weapons" looted by Meiteis since May 3 2023.[127]
The same statement criticised a resolution adopted by ruling NDA legislators calling for a "mass operation" against the Kuki militants responsible for the Jiribam killings within seven days, calling it "divisive, one-sided and communal".[127]
They urged that all civilian killings since 3 May 2023 be handed to the NIA.[127]
The existence of that NDA "mass operation" resolution is known to this chronicle only through the Kuki legislators' rebuttal; no outlet's own coverage of the resolution was retrieved this run.[127]
[unverified] beyond the quoted critique.
Also visible in the AFSPA record is a numbers tension within a week.[126][121]
The 14 November piece counts 22,000 CAPF personnel plus about 140 Army columns in the state.[126]
The 22 November presser puts CAPF at 288 companies, around 29,000 personnel, having added 90 companies (about 9,000) since August.[121]
The two figures are shown dated, not merged.[126][121]
On 8 November, the Supreme Court agreed to examine the authenticity of audio tapes presented by the Kuki Organization for Human Rights Trust.[114]
The tapes allegedly implicate Chief Minister N. Biren Singh in the violence — the August "tapes" controversy, now at the top court.[114]
Counsel Prashant Bhushan sought a court-monitored investigation; the court suggested forensic analysis and a sealed-cover option.[114]
The hearing was before CJI D.Y. Chandrachud's bench; the Solicitor General opposed the petition.[114]
The court was told the clips had been submitted to the Justice Lamba Commission four months earlier without action.[114]
On 19 November, the MHA-appointed Commission of Inquiry headed by former Gauhati HC Chief Justice Ajai Lamba was reported "in the middle of collecting evidence".[123]
It had received over 11,000 affidavits — papers kept in two rooms weighing about 2.5 tonnes — with witnesses to be summoned.[123]
The September 13 MHA notification had set a report deadline of 20 November.[123]
The Commission was still collecting evidence, and the deadline had not been extended as of late 19 November.[123]
One official recounted how the public-notice phase had been crippled: internet blocked, newspapers unpublishing, and only 22 of 57 Post Offices working when the Commission visited in June 2023.[123]
On 18 November, the NIA took over the three Jiribam cases (section 2).[116]
On 20 November, the Supreme Court gave the Manipur government eight weeks to respond to a plea challenging the Inner Line Permit system.[117]
The plea was filed by the organisation 'Amra Bangalee', with notices outstanding since 3 January 2022.[117]
On 29 November, retired Manipur High Court Chief Justice Siddharth Mridul — who had demitted office on 21 November — said the "clamour for President's Rule seems to be gaining momentum in Imphal".[122]
He described violence continuing due to infiltration and the smuggling of drugs and arms through Myanmar.[122]
He said attributing the ethnic violence to the March 2023 High Court order "would be far from the truth and most unfair".[122]
The order was "only the spark that lit the fire as Manipur had been sitting on a powder keg with simmering discontent for a long time".[122]
He also said the suspension of the Free Movement Regime was being "opposed by all communities bar the Meiteis".[122]
A cross-state perception clash: Tuliram Ronghang, Chief Executive Member of the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) in Assam, said on 26 November that Karbi Anglong had no space for "newly-arrived 1,000 Kukis from 500 families" and promised migrants a "good send-off".[125]
Two Assam Kuki organisations replied that the claim was "contradictory and baseless".[125]
They pointed out Ronghang had earlier said the migrants had already been sent back, and that mass migration during an active conflict was implausible.[125]
Chief Minister N. Biren Singh said his government would take back people who were pre-1961 residents of Manipur.[125]
Both the migration claim and its rebuttal are reported here as claims.[125]