Imphal, March 27: Reacting to the report of the Chief Minister's plan to visit Thanlon and Parbung today, the Hmar Inpui (Hmar Supreme House) has said that it cannot help but treat the visit with reservation.

The apex body of the Hmar community in a statement said that the people of Thanlon and Parbung subdivisions bore the brunt of non-tribal UGs who raped women, tortured the villagers and created mayhem in January last and before.

"As many as 160 landmine victims and 21 rape cases have been so far reported and more than one thousand innocent villagers had fled to Mizoram," stated the Hmar Inpui.

The Hmar body said that Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh and his Government had been maintaining an uncanny silence for long "as if the incidents had occurred on planet Mars and now the Chief Minister has coughed up enough courage to visit these areas after more than two months of the occurrence of the incidents." It said that the Chief Minister and his men should visit the affected areas by road and not by helicopters and spend a few days so that they can interact and see the reality of things in the areas and even visit the victims' homes.

There has been no governance as all Government machineries are virtually absent in the areas.

The Chief Minister will notice this only when he travels by road, stated the Hmar supreme body and added that it would not take part in the reception programme.

"We welcome the Chief Minister's decision to institute a Judicial Inquiry in the rape cases and the mayhem and the appoinment of a retired Judge for the purpose but the Hmar Inpui categorically objects to the clubbing together of a case of the alleged mistreatment of M Naobi by the Manipur police commandos with the cases of rape perpetrated by non-tribal UGs at Lungthuilien, Parbung, Turbung and elsewhere," stated the Hmar Inpui reasoning that the two cases are quite different.

The Hmar Inpui then demanded that the M Naobi case and the Hmar rape/mayhem incidents should not be clubbed together.

It demanded that the inquiry on the rape of the Hmar girls be conducted purely at the crime scenes and also that the Manipur Government make the necessary arrangements for the inquiry team to move to Parbung areas immediately to conduct the inquiry.

Other demands of the Hmar apex body are that the government ensures transparency in the inquiry and free from any outside influence particularly from the perpetrators of the crimes and then to be included or associated by the inquiry team with the representatives of Hmar students Association and Hmar Women Association.Hmar Inpui considers any attempt to move the inquiry outside the crime scenes as a deliberate attempt to hoodwind justice,said the Hmar apex body signed by its president S.K.Joute and its secretary V.F.

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