What does Black Day mean? For the Kuki people, September 13 is not just a date on a calendar. It is a wound that has never healed, a collective trauma passed from parents to children. It is the day we remember Joupi 1993, when over 115 of our mothers, fathers, children and elderly were butchered in a single day by NSCN-IM. And today, on that same sacred day of mourning, when every Kuki household lights a candle for the dead, India-sponsored NSCN-IM and its ally ZUF-K has again shed innocent blood to remind us that genocide is not history. It is continuing.
Today at around 4 AM, while the hills were still dark and the village was still asleep, armed NSCN-IM cadres entered Tollen, a remote and defenceless Kuki village in Tamenglong district. There is no security post there, no armed group, only farmers and families. They did not come to fight armed men. They did not give any warning. They did not challenge any village volunteer. They entered a civilian house and fired indiscriminately at a sleeping family. Mrs. Lhingzangai Singsit, a mother, was shot dead on the spot inside her own home. Her blood spilled on her own floor. Her husband, Mr. Seineh Singsit, who tried to shield his wife and child with his bare body, was critically injured and later died in the hospital. Their innocent child was injured, traumatised and orphaned within an hour.
Who are these NSCN-IM cadres who only know how to kill women, children and civilians? They are not warriors. They have never been warriors, because a warrior fights another warrior who can fight back. These men have built their entire history by targeting unarmed civilians, by burning huts when men are in the fields, by killing mothers in front of children, by shooting farmers on their way to paddy fields. From Joupi to Tollen, their record shows only one type of target: women, children and defenceless civilians. This is why they have never dared to face Kuki armed groups, and have never even dared to face Kuki village volunteers who guard their villages with old single-barrel guns.
More importantly, who allows them to do this year after year? NSCN-IM is not an underground outfit hiding in the jungle anymore. It is a group under ceasefire agreement with the Government of India since 1997. It lives in designated camps built and maintained by India. It eats rations paid for by Indian taxpayers. Its leaders travel to Delhi for talks with full security. Its weapons are supposed to stay inside camps and be monitored by Indian agencies.
So we must ask the hard question that every Kuki is asking today at every Black Day observance. If NSCN-IM is under India’s ceasefire, how is it freely roaming with sophisticated arms in Tollen, Makui, L. Phaijang and along the entire IT Road belt? How is it setting up illegal checkpoints on public roads and collecting taxes from Kuki farmers on their own paddy fields? How is it killing our women and children and running back to its camps without any arrest? Who supplied the bullets that killed Mrs. Lhingzangai Singsit today? If India feeds them, houses them, protects them and pays them crores every year, and still allows them to kill us without punishment, is India not sponsoring our murder?
This is not an accusation made in anger today. It is a documented pattern since the 1990s, when nearly 360 Kuki villages were burnt to ashes, when nearly one lakh Kukis were displaced from their ancestral lands in Ukhrul, Tamenglong and Senapati, and when over 1,100 innocent Kuki civilians were killed one by one, mostly women, children and the elderly. Where was the Government of India then? Silent. The pattern continues today. When four people were killed on IT Road recently, the entire state machinery was quick to declare them innocent Liangmai civilians. But when Kuki farmers are killed on the same road, when they are abducted and their trucks are burnt, not even an FIR is filed. No fact-finding team visits. This double standard and selective justice is what Kuki people call sponsorship.
A Kuki leader said it clearly today at Kangpokpi during the Black Day programme, “This shows India is sponsoring and protecting NSCN-IM while Kuki villages are left to die.” He is right. How can a ceasefire group kill two civilians on Black Day, kill a wife on the spot and a husband in the hospital, injure a child, and still face no arrest, no condemnation from Delhi, and no statement from the ceasefire monitoring cell? If a Kuki village volunteer fires one bullet to defend his village, he is immediately branded a militant and his village is raided. If NSCN-IM kills a whole family in Tollen, it is still protected as a ceasefire group.
The Government of India gives crores of rupees every year to maintain NSCN-IM camps, to pay stipends and to feed cadres. That money is public money. It could have built a high school in Tollen. It could have provided a primary health centre in Tamenglong. It could have repaired the IT Road that has remained broken for decades. Instead, that money today bought the bullets that killed a mother on the spot and a father in the hospital.
We have now crossed 1,100 deaths since 1990. 1,100 is not just a number. It means 1,100 mothers who never returned from the fields, 1,100 fathers shot while protecting their families, and 1,100 children who grew up as orphans. How many more Kuki bodies does Delhi need to count before it treats our blood as Indian blood?
Here is the biggest bias that proves this is not negligence but a policy of discrimination. Since 1990 till today, 13th September 2026, in connection with more than 1,100 Kuki civilian killings by NSCN-IM, the Government of India has not arrested a single NSCN-IM cadre, has not filed a single charge sheet and has not punished a single commander. Zero arrests in 36 years for 1,100 murders. But when it comes to Kuki armed cadres, who are also under Suspension of Operation with the same Government of India, India has arrested hundreds, lodged them in jails in Imphal, Guwahati and Delhi, and labelled them as militants and narco-terrorists. Same ceasefire, two different treatments. One group is protected even after killing 1,100 civilians. The other group is jailed even while defending its own village.
This is not law. This is bias of the Government of India. This is selective justice, and selective justice itself is a human rights violation. Under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, every citizen has the right to equality before the law and the right to life. But for Kuki civilians, there is no equality, no right to life and no protection. How can India claim to be the world’s largest democracy when its agencies protect a group that only kills women and children on Black Day, and arrest those who try to protect those women and children? This violates human rights, international humanitarian law that says civilians must never be targeted, and the ceasefire ground rules that say cadres must stay in camps.
Therefore, we Kuki people demand answers, not condolences. We demand immediate arrest of the NSCN-IM and ZUF-K cadres who killed Mrs. Lhingzangai Singsit and Mr. Seineh Singsit at Tollen on Black Day. We demand a judicial inquiry headed by a retired Supreme Court judge into how a ceasefire group moves freely with arms outside designated camps and kills civilians under the nose of security forces, and why not a single arrest has been made for 1,100 killings. If NSCN-IM cannot live without killing Kuki women and children, if its only targets are defenceless families, we demand that the Government of India abrogate its ceasefire with them immediately.
As I write this, Tollen is empty. Survivors have fled to the forest with only the clothes they wore, just like their parents did in 1993. The injured child who lost both parents this morning lies in a hospital bed asking why his mother will not wake up. For Delhi, this may be a small incident in a remote village. For us, it is final proof that Sahnit-Ni is not history. It is happening again today, under the watch of a government that claims to protect all its citizens equally.
Stop sponsoring our killers. Stop funding those who only kill women, children and civilians. Stop arresting our defenders while protecting our killers, because history will record this bias as complicity.
