In Manipur, keep call records for 5 years: Centre to telcos

Amid the recent spike in ethnic violence in insurgency-hit Manipur, the Centre has directed telecom operators in the state to preserve all call records of every citizen there for five years.

Normally call data records (CDRs) are maintained by companies for six months, however, highly placed sources have claimed that the directions are learnt to have been given to the Department of Telecom (DoT) by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), apparently to track the possibility of armed militants involved in recent incidents of violence, being in touch with extremists from across the Myanmar border.

The telecom operators were asked to maintain CDRs of people in Manipur for five years during a recent meeting held with DoT officials, sources aware of the development said.

This comes amid the recent incidents of armed militants having run down a tribal dominated village in Jiribam district, during which a woman was shot and allegedly raped, before being burnt to death.

This incident occurred on November 7. A few days later on November 11, suspected militants attacked a CRPF camp, which led to the killing of 10 of them. Another set of militants had attacked a nearby relief camp on the same day and a police station, and had kidnapped six members of a Meitei family (three women and three children) from the camp, whose bodies were later found along the Assam-Manipur border.

While all these incidents are now being probed by the NIA, what was common among them was that the suspected militants were armed with sophisticated weapons, security sources said.

This, they said, does not rule out the possibility of militants in Manipur being supplied weapons by extremists operating from across the border in Myanmar.

It is likely that the telecom operators are being asked to preserve CDRs for five years to establish this connection, sources said.

These incidents of violence have sparked protests across the state in the past couple of weeks. Besides, houses of several political leaders were also damaged, following which the Centre sent reinforcements of paramilitary companies to Manipur. The need for preserving CDRs is said to have arisen to keep track of wanted elements operating in the state, sources further said.

Meanwhile, the state government has extended its ban on mobile Internet and data services, including VSAT and VPN services, in nine districts for an additional two days till November 26.

The move comes as tensions remain high, following violent incidents, including arson attacks on the residences of elected officials.

In another development, the Manipur Government on Sunday announced that normal classes will resume for all schools across the state, including government, government-aided, private, and central institutions, starting November 25.

Six of family were brutally tortured, reveals autopsy

Meanwhile, the autopsy reports of the six members of a family, who were killed by armed militants after being kidnapped from a relief camp, have brought forth gory details of how they were tortured before being killed. The dead included three children, aged eight months, three years and eight years.

The three-year-old male child was reportedly was stabbed in the chest, and hand. He was shot once in the face and sharp instruments were used in the face, scalp, and interior chest wall before killing him, the autopsy report said.

He was kidnapped along with five other family members — his mother, infant sibling, grandmother, his mother’s sister, and her 8-year-old daughter. All were from the Meitei community.

The autopsy report of his 25-year-old mother showed that three bullets were shot from the back of her chest and the fourth bullet into her buttocks. The autopsy report of his 60-year grandmother showed five bullet wounds.