Manipur has slipped back into unrest after the April 7 strike on a house in Tronglaobi village in Bishnupur district killed two children and left their mother badly hurt, setting off protests, shutdowns and renewed questions about whether the state’s fragile calm was ever more than temporary. The children, a five-year-old boy and his infant sister, were inside the family home when the explosion tore through it. Police and state authorities have yet to present a final public account of who fired the projectile, though the attack has quickly become a flashpoint in the valley. The deaths have carried an emotional force that numbers alone cannot explain. The children belonged to a Meitei family in a district that sits close to one of the conflict’s most sensitive fault lines, where the valley and hill geographies meet and suspicion travels faster than official clarification. Members of the Meitei community accused Kuki militants of carrying out the strike, while Kuki groups rejected those allegations. Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh said soon after the blast that the perpetrators had not yet been identified and described the bombing as the work of those seeking to shatter the peace that had tentatively held for months.
What followed showed how thin that peace had become. On the day of the attack, crowds stormed a security camp near Gelmol, not far from the blast site, and police firing during the turmoil left more people dead. Authorities imposed curfew in Imphal and surrounding areas and suspended internet services for several days as anger spread across the valley districts. By mid-April, torch rallies, road blockades and confrontations with security forces had become the visible shape of a public mood that mixed grief, fury and a deep lack of trust in the state’s security architecture.
That anger has now hardened into organised protest. A five-day shutdown that began on April 19 disrupted normal life across the valley, with civil society groups and a Joint Action Committee pressing the government for arrests and a tougher security response. Protesters have demanded that all those involved be detained by April 25 and have also sought the replacement of some central forces with state units in sensitive fringe areas. Their demands go beyond punishment for one attack. They point to a broader belief among valley groups that the present deployment has failed to protect civilians living near the conflict’s frontline districts.
The state government has tried to contain the fallout by combining negotiation with assurances of force. Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam said the authorities had held several rounds of talks with the victims’ family and protest leaders and had agreed to many of their demands. He said five suspects linked to the United Kuki National Liberation Army had been arrested in connection with the mortar blast, a significant claim because it moves the case from accusation into the realm of a defined investigation. He also said the government had offered jobs to the children’s parents and was planning tighter deployments in vulnerable areas.
Even so, the atmosphere has grown more combustible rather than calmer. Another violent episode in Bishnupur this past week, tied to a drug seizure operation and a clash involving security personnel, left around 18 civilians injured and vehicles burnt. Separately, two civilians were killed in an ambush on National Highway 202 near Ukhrul on April 18, widening fears that Manipur’s conflict is once again spreading across districts and communities. Each new incident feeds the sense that the state is not dealing with an isolated atrocity but with a chain reaction in which one grievance quickly unlocks another.
The wider political backdrop makes the relapse especially damaging. Manipur’s ethnic conflict, which broke out in May 2023 between the Meitei community and Kuki tribes, has already killed around 260 people and displaced more than 60,000. President’s Rule was imposed in February 2025 after N. Biren Singh resigned, and a new government led by Yumnam Khemchand Singh took office only on February 4 this year. That transition had raised hopes that a political reset might steady the state. The Bishnupur killings have instead exposed how little structural confidence has been rebuilt between communities, security agencies and the government.