THE FEAR OF AN ATTACK was always present, but Ramtiem Darngawn and two of his friends had convinced each other that everything would be okay. The village of Muolzawl, situated on the banks of the Jiri River, was typically quiet. The Hmar people—a tribe that is part of the larger Zo ethnic family, which also includes the Kuki, Paite and Mizo communities—were known across this belt for their pineapples, and the entirely Hmar village of Muolzawl stood out for its produce, even among its peers. Darngawn was a woodcutter working at a mainland Indian-owned wood factory not far from the village. Only the occasional errand would take him away from the factory. Since June, when the fires of Manipur’s chilling violence had been restoked in Jiribam, a sliver of a district along the Assam border, even those rare ventures outside stopped.
Exhausted after half a day of work, he and his friends “took a break, venturing outside of the factory to an area with a little bit of shade for a little siesta,” Darngawn told me. “I was just about to doze off when I was shaken up by my friend.” They heard an approaching group. Nobody unknown ventured into this area, let alone at this time of the day. The group spotted them. “Close to twenty men, fully armed and in camouflage fatigue approached us,” he said. “In a blink of an eye, my friends broke into a run. Before I could nudge myself to move faster, I was caught.”
“The fears I had felt every day since the violence started in Manipur flashed before my eyes,” he told me. As the blows rained down on Darngawn—some with bare hands, others with the butts of guns—the men blindfolded and dragged him away. “The only thought that kept coming to me was that I was going to die.” That is what happens usually in Manipur, following an abduction. You either go missing, which usually means you are dead, but your body will not be retrieved. Or your body will be found, blindfolded, hands tied.
Darngawn’s fate was not yet sealed. His friends reached the Jiri, trying to call everybody they could. They took a boat parked close by, and rowed with all their remaining breath to the closest village. They ran to the chief’s house, who informed leaders of the community. As the district was already in the middle of an attritional civil war, security forces had no option but to launch an operation immediately to find Darngawn. The last time a man had gone missing, he was found dead within hours, and Jiribam had burned for days.