Six years after the killing of a suspected member of the insurgent group People’s Liberation Army, a Manipur Police personnel has confessed that he had killed Sanjit Meitei in a fake encounter.
In a startling admission, Thounaojam Herojit Singh, a gallantry award recipient, said that he shot an unarmed 22-year-old Chungkham Sanjit Meitei back in 2009. Singh is now suspended from the force.
According to Singh, he pumped bullets into the former PLA militant acting on orders from his senior, the then Additional Superintendent of Police in Imphal. He said that he shot at Meitei with a 9mm pistol on chest.
“Yes, I shot him. I shot Sanjit Meitei. No, he was not armed,’’ 35-year-old Herojit Singh was quoted as saying to The Indian Express. “I felt no remorse, no sympathy after I killed Sanjit. I felt nothing. It was an order and I had to simply carry it out.”
When asked why he was confessing now, Singh said that he now feared for his life and he no longer had any faith in the legal system.
Singh’s confession contradicts the Manipur Police’s account submitted in court and to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Reacting to the confessions of Singh, Meitei’s mother demanded that either the government must ensure justice for her, or Singh should be handed over to her so that she can avenge the murder of her son.
Commandos of Manipur Police were in July 2009 accused of killing Sanjit Meitei, an alleged terrorist who had surrendered but was shot dead on a busy road in Imphal. The killing of the unarmed youth had led to protests in the state.
Days after the alleged encounter, a national weekly came out with pictures of an unarmed Meitei being taken into a shop where he was allegedly shot dead.
The Centre on Wednesday promised to look into the purported confession of a Manipur police commando that he had killed in cold blood an unarmed suspected insurgent in 2009 in an alleged fake encounter that had sparked widespread outrage in the northeast state.
“I will get the information and then I can comment then we will look into it,” Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is on a visit to Kerala, said in Thiruvananthapuram.
Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said the Centre has taken “cognisance” of the said reports on the purported confession.
“I was little disturbed to see this news and confession which has been reported. We have taken cognisance of this revelation and necessary steps will be taken,” Rijiju said.
Congress leader R P N Singh questioned the silence of the police commando in the matter for all these years but said it needed to be investigated if the reported confession was true. Ibobi Singh of the Congress was the chief minister at the time of the alleged fake encounter.
