Had a camera not captured, frame by frame, the killing of a 23-year-old former militant, allegedly by Manipur Police commandos in the heart of this city a month ago to this date, Chungkham Sanjit would have been just another number — Number 751.

For, that’s the official number of insurgents killed by the Manipur Police since January 2007 when the renewed crackdown is supposed to have begun. To put this in context: in the same period, the number of Naxalites killed across the country was only 447.

In fact, in the seven months of this year, Manipur Police have killed 225 people in encounters — another 65 have been killed allegedly by insurgents from a clutch of 20 groups as part of their kidnapping and extortion campaign.

That’s why Sanjit’s death — now being probed by a judicial commission — has highlighted the conflicting elements of the ongoing crackdown on insurgency by the Congress government of Chief Minister Ibobi Singh.

One, it comes against the backdrop of growing public anger against extortion and kidnapping by insurgents — independent estimates show that since January last year, there have been as many as 320 major public protests against insurgents.

At the same time, Sanjit’s death reveals how “encounters” have become de rigueur in the police force. So much so that it was the Manipur Police that swept this year’s August 15 “gallantry award” decorations with a total of 74 — the rest of the country got 138. Almost all of these awards — more than three times the number for 2008 — were for encounters with suspected insurgents.

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