Peace eludes India’s Manipur even after defeating BJP over ethnic violence

In the riot-hit remote state, hopes of a change following the governing party’s defeat are shortlived as deadly clashes continue.

Jiribam/Chennai, India – Thangman Guite had just finished her dinner on the night of June 6 when she received a phone call.

“They are coming, hide,” is all the 26-year-old school teacher heard.

Several other residents of Vengnuam, a village in Manipur state’s Jiribam district bordering Assam in India’s northeast, received a similar phone call.

Within minutes, Guite switched off the lights of her house and instructed about 15 villagers assembled before her home to run towards the house closest to the nearby forest. She also asked everyone to switch off their phones.

As they huddled in one of the rooms in that house, not even daring to approach the window to have a look outside, they heard voices and gunshots as at least two vehicles, allegedly carrying armed men belonging to Arambai Tenggol, a local militia, began to enter the village.

The huddled villagers ran to the forest, as quietly as they could. While hiding in darkness and fearing being discovered, Guite said she began to have flashes of all those captured and killed in the deadly ethnic violence that has gripped Manipur since May last year.

“I thought we wouldn’t [make it alive], honestly,” Guite told Al Jazeera. Within an hour, she saw smoke billowing from their village.

Early the next morning, soldiers of the Indian army, deployed to contain the violence, arrived.

As Guite made her way out of the forest and entered the village, she discovered her house was among dozens reduced to cinders. The church she prayed at every Sunday had suffered the same fate.

A 40-year-old man was missing. Residents said he had been abducted.

The incident