Imphal: Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh said that they have filed an FIR against the members of the Editors’ Guild of India for trying to create more clashes in Manipur.
A three members of crowdfunded fact-finding team of the Editors’ Guild of India went to Manipur to look into the media’s reportage of the ethnic conflict.
The FIR was filed against them for false, fabricated and sponsored” report.
The Editors’ Guild of India (EGI) in the report released on Saturday said there are clear indications that the leadership of the state became partisan during the conflict.
“It should have avoided taking sides in the ethnic conflict, but it failed to do its duty as a democratic government which should have represented the entire state,” the report said among its several observations in a concluding summary.
Imphal-based social worker N Sarat Singh filed the first information report (FIR) against the three who came to Manipur from August 7 to 10 – Seema Guha, Sanjay Kapoor, and Bharat Bhushan. The EGI president has also been mentioned as an accused in the FIR.
The FIR states the EGI report captioned the photo of a burning building in Churachandpur district as a “Kuki house”.
The Manipur forest department’s beat office in Churachandpur district that was set on fire on May 3 was shown as a “Kuki house” in the Editors’ Guild of India (EGI) report. The EGI said it has corrected the error and will publish a fresh report.
The EGI report alleged the Manipur government branded all Kuki tribes as “illegal immigrants” after some 4,000 refugees fleeing the military coup in neighbouring Myanmar crossed into Manipur.
The EGI in the report faulted the state government for taking a series of steps that led to resentment among the Chin-Kukis to build up. “The state government seems to have facilitated the majority’s anger against the Kukis through several seemingly partisan statements and policy measures,” the report stated.
The EGI yesterday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, accepted the error in its report and said it is “being rectified and an updated report will be uploaded shortly.” “… We regret the error that crept in at the photo editing stage.