Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
What the election means for a village in Nagaland rocked by violence, death
OTING (NAGALAND): On Monday, February 27, the people of Nagaland will vote in assembly polls. In the two previous iterations of the state elections, there was much uncertainty in the run-up — with parties threatening a boycott in the absence of a permanent solution to the fractious Naga political crisis, with talks stuck on the question of a separate constitution and flag. Yet, in both 2013 and 2018, peace was brokered right on the cusp of voting day, and Nagaland came out in big numbers: 91.62% voted in 2013 and 85.62% in 2018.
Yet this year, in one corner of Nagaland, there is one village, one family and one man who will not emerge to vote on February 27. Yaehwang Konyak, 34, will remain curled up on a mattress on his kitchen floor, like he has been for the past 14 months, with a bullet injury in his skull.
In the village of Oting, Yaehwang is considered fortunate. His life has been altered permanently, but at least he is alive. He is one of two survivors of the first shooting during a controversial operation by the Indian Army where 14 civilians and one officer lost their lives on December 4 and 5, 2021; it is an incident that has left Oting seething with an anger that will affect their choices on voting day; not only because of their pain, but because their pain has been forgotten.
The December gunfight
At around 4.30pm on December 4, Yaehwang and seven other men, all from the Konyak tribe, were returning from work in a pick-up van from a coal mine in Tiru, 6km away from Oting, when they came under fire from personnel of the 21 Para Special Force on the road that connects the two remote villages.
Yaehwang was seated in the front seat of the pick-up, and was hit by a bullet on the left side of his skull. One other man was injured, and six were dead in a matter of minutes. Over the next few hours, seven more villagers from Oting were killed after they reached the scene upon hearing the gunshots, and they were fired upon by army personnel. The Army maintained that they fired in self-defence as irate villagers carrying machetes and other weapons attacked them, killing one security official and injuring several others. The next morning, one more civilian from Oting was killed and another injured, after an angry mob allegedly tried to ransack the Assam Rifles camp in Mon.
In his statement to parliament on December 6, Union home minister Amit Shah maintained that the army had information that there were insurgents moving in the area, and had laid an ambush. When the pick-up van carrying civilians tried to flee after it was signalled to stop, army personnel opened fire, in a case of “mistaken identity”, Shah said.
But in its charge sheet submitted to court in May 2022, the special investigation team constituted by the Nagaland government held 30 personnel of the 21 Para Special Forces responsible for the killings. The SIT, led by Nagaland Police IGP (Range) Lipasunep Jamir, maintained that the commander of the army unit “wilfully suppressed” information that could have prevented the killings of the six civilians in the first incident and deaths of eight others subsequently. The Nagaland police has not yet received prosecution sanction from the centre.
The Army also constituted a court of inquiry immediately after the incident which pointed to violation of procedures. In May 2022, Lt Gen Rana Pratap Kalita, the General Officer Commandingin-Chief of the Eastern Command told news agencies that the court of inquiry was complete. He said that the army had also received the Nagaland Police SIT report and both were being analysed. “There are SOPs to be followed. At times deviations have taken place. Whenever there is deviation, strict action is taken. In this case also, action will be taken as per the Army Act and requisite laws of the land,” he said at the time. Nothing has been done, and the inquiry report has not been made public.
Following the Oting killings, there were mass protests in Nagaland with several other states renewing the demand for the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, commonly known as AFSPA. Under the act, areas are declared a “disturbed area” and security forces are allowed to use force against persons it deems acting in contravention of the law, or to enter and search, or arrest without a search warrant. The Act also states that “no prosecution, suit or other legal proceedings shall be instituted, except with previous sanction of the central government”.
In Nagaland, AFSPA is now only operational in 15 police stations across seven districts. It remains in operation however, in Mon, where Oting is situated, and eight other districts of the state.
A village distraught
63 kilometres away from the district headquarters of Mon, Oting is a village surrounded by hills, 222 families living far and wide apart. There is no concrete road that leads to the village, and while some houses are now built of brick and mortar, most are erected from bamboo, wood and thatch. Residents work either as labourers in coal mines close by, or live of subsistence farming. The literacy rate in the village is a meagre 33.18%, compared to Nagaland’s average of 79.55%.
Yaehwang Konyak’s home is made of bamboo and thatch, and for most of the day, the three members of the family other than him — his mother, elder brother and sister-in-law — hover in the kitchen where he lies immobile.
His elder brother Kumwang said that for the first two panic stricken days after the shooting, they did not know where he was. “He was taken by army personnel first to the hospital in Mon and then to the Assam Medical College Hospital in Dibrugarh. When the bodies of the other dead were found, he wasn’t among them. We feared that his body had been thrown away,” Kumwang said.
It was only on December 6 that a nurse working at AMCH Dibrugarh called to tell them he was alive. “His skull was fractured and he was admitted in AMCH for a month and at the hospital in Mon for two weeks. The bullet didn’t enter his brain, but the injury has made him a vegetable,” he added.
The family now struggles to make ends meet. Kumwang is unemployed, and his mother Kumyin tends to Yaehwang’s needs. The family received ₹50,000 from the district administration as part of a compensation, but there has been no further relief. “He was active before the incident and used to take part in social activities in the village. We haven’t put him in a grave like the others, but he’s almost dead. He can’t talk, walk... He has been supine for the last 14 months, oblivious to anything around him,” Kumwang said.
In the home next to Yaehwang, there is even more grief. His friend and neighbor, 33-year old Shomwang was also in the front of the pick-up van, and died that day. The family was given ex gratia relief of ₹16 lakh, and Shomwang’s younger brother was given a job as a peon in the state agriculture department — all little succour. “We didn’t even get to see his body. They were sent to Mon for a postmortem and brought back completely packed in coffins. They weren’t even brought back home before being buried,” said Chemwong Konyak, Shomwang’s father.
The election
In Oting, the remnants of tragedy are everywhere. They are in the three burnt army trucks which the villagers set ablaze, and the black flags that flutter behind them, to commemorate those that died. But for 22-year-old Sheiwang Konyak, these are constant reminders not just about that night, but that there has been little help after the initial grant of compensation.
Apart from Yaehwang Konyak, Sheiwang is the only other survivor of the first shootings on December 4. He is not completely incapacitated, but has lost sight in his left eye due to a grenade blast, and has two bullet injuries on his right arm; three grazed his stomach. Sheiwang’s elder brother, 26-year-old Thakwang was one of those that died in the incident.
Ever since, Sheiwang’s family of five that includes elderly parents and a younger brother and sister, have had no steady income. “I think we should get financial help for proper health treatment that can bring back vision in my eye. Once cured, I would like a government job as well as we have lost a member from my family. It would help bring a steady income,” said Sheiwang.
But Oting’s faith that something will happen for them is shaking. Simply because, they said, nobody seems to care. “No minister, no senior officers, not even the local MLA from ruling BJP, P Paiwang Konyak, who is a cabinet minister in the state government, visited us or our village once. His voters died. He should have come and grieved with us. No one from the army also came to Oting. How will we forgive, when no one came to seek forgiveness?” said Chemwong.
“Neither the sitting BJP MLA, nor the Congress candidate has come to our village seeking votes yet. In the past 14 months, Oting has got lot of media attention. But the news stories haven’t resulted in anything concrete for the village or to victims and their kin,” said Longwang Konyak, chairman of Oting village committee.
The 2011 census pegs the population of Oting at 1,266, and the village’s 2023 polling station has 1,101 voters. The assembly constituency is Tizit, currently represented by BJP’s P Paiwang Konyak, who is standing for re-election. When contacted he said, “I am busy in meetings and in a conference.”
Konyak is up against T Thomas Konyak of the Congress, who said: “If elected, I will provide proper medical treatment to those injured in the Oting shootings and also give financial assistance to families of victims who are struggling to make ends meet.”
The Naga People’s Front candidate Tahwang Konyak is the “Angh” or the village chief of Oting. Despite repeated attempts he did not respond to phone calls.
This indifference may affect how votes swing beyond Oting, particularly among the Konyaks that have the highest proportion of all Naga tribes in the state, experts said. With a population of 237,568, they comprise 12% of the state’s population, concentrated in and around districts like Mon that border Myanmar.
“In the election, the Oting incident and the victims and their families seem to have been pushed to background by the demand for a separate state by organisations in eastern Nagaland. It’s not in manifesto of political parties, but the tribal bodies there also appear to have kept the issue in periphery,” said Visakhonu Hibo, principal of Japfu Christian College.