A Manipur Police officer was shot dead by suspected insurgents while he was overseeing the construction of a helipad in Manipur’s Moreh, a trading town on the border with Myanmar, the Manipur government said in a statement after an emergency meeting of the state cabinet over the killing.
The unprecedented attack on the helipad project this morning marks a sharp increase in hostilities between the security forces and insurgents amid the semblance of hard-won normalcy in ethnic violence-hit Manipur.
Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Chingtham Anand was rushed to a local clinic in the restive hill-majority town that saw intense ethnic clashes between the Kuki tribes and the Meiteis in the past few months. He died during treatment, the police said.