Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, August 20 2009:
People residing in the Loktak lake and its periphery have been keeping in a state of anxiety as security forces frequently visiting the area on the backdrop of presence of militants.
After hundreds of villagers of Khordak area in Bishnupur district on the shore of Loktak Lake were left psychic trauma during the "Operation Summer Storm" launched during the month of April last to flush out militants, launching of operation at Nongmaikhong of Loktak Lake area once again caused panic to the villagers.
Currently, security forces are keeping closed vigilant at the huts at the fish farms.
Security forces taking advantage of the absent of farmers catching fish from the farms at any time they wanted.
Fishermen and farmers stopped from going to their farms, fishing and cultivation works at their fields, Memchatombi, a villager told this correspondent.
Apart from this, the 11 year-old girl allegedly kept detained by the police to force her parent surrender to the security force has been freed apparently out of fear of public reaction but the state of worry and nervousness left with the girl who has been hospitalized at Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Imphal.
The 11 year-old girl named Salam Bidyarani Devi was taken by the security forces when her father was not found at home on August 14 last.
According to the villagers, security forces charged her father Dewan of maintaining link with militants and he kept conceals weapons of the militants in his fish farm.
However, police said the ailing girl who was found alone in the house was taken by them to the hospital for medical care, not detained as alleged by the villagers.
Whatever it may be but the condition of the little school going girl seems to be in not in right situation.
She is crying of fear and repeatedly felling unconsciousness.
Even though she is at the hospital under the care of doctors, she is pleading her local grand mothers taking care of her at the hospital to go home.
"Ei yamna kiye (I feel scared), Abok ei kadaida lei (Grandma, where am I?), Ei yamna ware (I am very tried), etc.
are the words she repeatedly says amids sobbings on the lap of a local grandmother who looks after her in the absence of her parents.
When she comes to consciousness for some moments, Bidyarani, a student of Class-VI, says, police kept her among the women home guard personnel at the police station.
When she insisted on going home, police sometimes threatened her that they will not let her go until her parents surrender to them.
The grandma who was with the girl told that when she was taken with the ailing girl on the night of August, they even threatened to kill like Thangjam Manorama who was killed by the Assam Rifles in 2004 after allegedly raped.
When the girl refused to take food, police personnel at Mayang Imphal police station where the girl was kept detained even asked whether she is going to replace Sharmila who has been fasting for the last nearly nine year demanding repeal of the AFSPA, 1958 .
The grandma, Ningol Devi expressed hate and strong condemnation to the "uncivilized words" used by the state police personnel when she was staying at the police station with the child.
Meanwhile, womenfolk of Nongmaikhong where the girl hailed from today turned up at the chief minister bungalow to lodge a complaint with regard to the child detention and release of her parent by the security forces were dispersed by the police on duty.
The womenfolk are demanding unconditional release of the parents of the child who has been admitted at the psychic trauma unit of the RIMS hospital for further treatment.