Restoring constitutional order in Manipur

Police and security personnel during a search operation in the fringe and vulnerable areas of hill and valley districts of Manipur.
| Photo Credit: PTI

An editorial titled ‘Welcome spotlight: On the Supreme Court directive to Manipur government’ published in The Hindu on December 14, 2024, rightly mentions that the executive’s reticence and lack of accountability, both at the federal and State levels, for the unrelenting ethnic violence in Manipur has again forced the higher judiciary to intervene. However, we must be circumspect in projecting the Supreme Court as a benevolent institutional actor that has dutifully responded with alacrity matched by requisite conviction, and concern to consistently hold the executive to account.

A thorough assessment of the Supreme Court’s interventions in Manipur over the last 18 months and the incremental steps it can take to rebuild trust in the rule of law is at least merited. In general, we can witness a gradual slide towards institutional dereliction, complacency, and apathy that is unbecoming of a Constitutional Court meant for all Indians. This is evident from the fact that, except for the last hearing on December 9, where it sought details of destroyed and encroached properties, the court did not hold any effective hearings or pass corresponding orders in 2024.

Throughout this year, the main batch of petitions on Manipur was heard only six times. In other words, the court functioned as if its writ jurisdiction had ceased to extend to Manipur, even as 2024 saw some of the bloodiest phases of violence and gruesome killing of innocent victims belonging to both warring ethnic communities. Adding to this are the continuation of various events that emerged on or after May 3, 2023, and are unprecedented in the life of our republic. The list of illustrations is lengthy and extensive — the demographic and geographical separation of the State and its enforcement through a militarised buffer zone, the State’s complete surrender over the monopoly of violence and law and order to armed militant groups, and the administration of an illegal, hateful ethno-cultural oath to legislators by the Arambai Tenggol.

On some occasions, the Supreme Court did respond, especially when it took suo moto cognisance after a video depicting tribal women being sexually assaulted and paraded naked by a mob went viral on social media. But its responses were episodic across several months in 2023, only to remain largely absent in 2024. This is evident as magisterial courts in Assam, to whom the Supreme Court had given charge of pre-trial procedures, await its directions to take cognisance of the chargesheets filed and begin the trial. For instance, the trial is yet to begin in the case of the sexual assault and naked parade of two tribal women, even though the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed chargesheets against six accused persons, including a juvenile, in October 2023.

In an order dated August 7, 2023, the Supreme Court had directed: the formation of a committee of three retired judges, led by Justice Gita Mittal, to look into all matters of relief and rehabilitation; the constitution of 42 Special Investigation Teams (SITs) in six groups based on the crimes, comprising CBI officers drawn from cadres/States and headed by a retired Director-General of Police. By all accounts, the functioning of the former has been reduced to a mechanical, bureaucratic ritual of filing occasional reports. Several tribal student organisations have since also filed separate pleas before the Supreme Court for relocating displaced students to other universities and professional institutes. Simultaneously, a report in The Hindu (December 18, 2024) stated that chargesheets for only 6% (192 cases) out of 3,023 registered cases have been filed by the SIT till November 20, 2024. It remains unclear how much of the structure envisioned for the SITs by the Supreme Court is still intact, as publicly available information suggests that multiple IPS officers on deputation to the SITs from Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi have either sought repatriation or have already been repatriated back to their home cadres.

Crucial measures

These directions, initially viewed with a high degree of optimism, have overwhelmingly failed to instill any sense of justice among the people of Manipur or arrest their feelings of institutional neglect and the complete erosion of the rule of law. Now that the Supreme Court appears to have turned its attention back to Manipur, it must undertake the following measures to provide the State with a much-needed healing touch.

First, given the volatile situation in Manipur, inimical to a fair criminal justice system, the trials of cases investigated by the SITs should be transferred forthwith outside Manipur, and the appropriate trial courts should be allowed to take cognisance of chargesheets already filed. Second, the SITs should be directed to fill the existing informational vacuum and provide timely updates to petitioners and the families of deceased victims about the progress of the investigations and trials.

Thirdly, considering the enormity of multi-faceted issues arising from the conflict in Manipur that persist and are likely to continue due to the sharp governance deficit, a bipartisan High Powered Commission comprising eminent persons, including members from both conflicting communities, should be constituted. This commission, in turn, be directed to report its findings directly to a Special Bench of the Supreme Court, which should be given the task of exclusively hearing cases related to the ethnic violence in Manipur.

John Simte is a lawyer and researcher