Manipur conflict (2023–present)

Antecedents

On 7 November 2022, the Government of Manipur passed an order setting aside previous orders from the 1970s and 1980s that excluded villages from proposed Churachandpur-Khoupum protected forest, which automatically placed 38 ancestral villages in Churachandpur in the encroaching category. In February 2023, the BJP state government began an eviction drive in districts of Churachandpur, Kangpokpi and Tengnoupal, declaring the forest dwellers as encroachers—a move seen as anti-tribal.

In March, the Manipur Cabinet decided to withdraw from the Suspension of Operation agreements with three Kuki militant groups, including the Kuki National Army and the Zomi Revolutionary Army, though the central government did not support such a withdrawal. Several Manipuri organisations also demonstrated in New Delhi to press for a National Register of Citizens (NRC) to be created with 1951 as the base year, complaining of abnormal population growth in hill areas. The first violence broke out as five people were injured in a clash in the Kangpokpi district, where protesters gathered to hold a rally against "encroachment of tribal land in the name of reserved forests, protected forests and wildlife sanctuary". While, the state cabinet stated that the government will not compromise on "steps taken to protect the state government's forest resources and for eradicating poppy cultivation". Social scientists, such as Dhanabir Laishram, have argued that targeting those poor Kuki cultivators alone would be futile. A rich section of the Meitei community is blamed to be one of the major funders. On 11 April, three churches in Imphal's Tribal Colony locality were razed for being illegal constructions on government land.

On 20 April 2023, a judge of the Manipur High Court directed the state government to "consider request of the Meitei community to be included in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list." The Kukis feared that the ST status would allow the Meiteis purchase land in the prohibited hilly areas.

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders' Forum (ITLF) called for a total shut down on 28 April in protest of the state government actions, a day that also happened to have been scheduled for the chief minister N. Biren Singh to visit Churachandpur for the inauguration of an open air gym. The day before the visit, a mob set fire to the gym and vandalised it. The ITLF claimed that it started the agitation as the state government was not addressing the plight of the people. Section 144 was invoked on 28 April as well as a five-day Internet shutdown. The protesters clashed with the police and tear gas shells were used to disperse the mobs.

What has been said, openly, including by Chief Minister Biren Singh, is that too many “foreign” (Myanmar Kukis) are involved, there is foreign (Chinese, he insinuated) hand, and that the Kuki tribals are forest encroachers, illicit poppy growers, drug smugglers and terrorists. “Terrorist” is an expression he has used for them more than once and it has been widely reported in the national broadsheets.

Overview

Initial riots

On 3 May 2023, i.e. Day 1 of the Manipur Violence, the tribal organisation All Tribal Student Union Manipur (ATSUM), opposing the Meitei demand for ST status, conducted a "Tribal Solidarity March". Tens of thousands of protesters participated in the march across all hill districts of Manipur. According to the Union Home Ministry, the call for the march also generated a "counter response" by the Meiteis, and protests and rallies were called at various locations in the Imphal Valley. Reports were received of a counter-blockade at Torbung near the Bishnupur–Churachandpur district border, and a counter-agitation in the surrounding valley areas (such as the Kangvai village), where houses were attacked by Meitei mobs. Two dead bodies were discovered in the Kangvai village and tyres were burnt at the base of the Anglo-Kuki War Memorial gate at Leisang as an apparent provocation.

After the reportedly peaceful rally in the Churachandpur town in which 100,000 people participated, rallyists returning to the Torbung–Kangvai area faced the "counter-blockade" by the Meitei groups. This resulted in stone-throwing and arson of vehicles and properties. Kangvai Bazar adjacent to Torbung was burnt down. These events caused a large number of Kuki-Zo people from Churachandpur side to rush to the clash site and participate in the clashes, including the burning of the Bangla village in Churachandpur district. About 80 people were injured in the violence who were taken to the Churachandpur District Hospital, of whom at least three people died.

By the evening of 3 May, clashes spread to the Churachandpur town, where Meitei settlements were attacked, and the Imphal City, where Kuki-Zo settlements were attacked. Violence continued through the night of 3 May. Residences and churches of the Kuki tribal population were attacked in the valley areas. According to the police, many houses of the tribal population in Imphal were attacked and 500 occupants were displaced and had to take shelter in Lamphelpat. Around 1000 Meiteis affected by the violence also had to flee from the region and take shelter in Bishnupur. Twenty houses were burnt in the city of Kangpokpi. Violence was observed in Churachandpur, Kakching, Canchipur, Soibam Leikai, Tengnoupal, Langol, Kangpokpi and Moreh while mostly being concentrated in the Imphal Valley during which several houses, places of worship and other properties were burnt and destroyed.

On 4 May, fresh cases of violence were reported. The police force had to fire several rounds of tear gas shells to control the rioters. Kuki MLA Vunzjagin Valte (BJP), who was the representative of the tribal headquarters of Churachandpur, was attacked during the riots while he was returning from the state secretariat. His condition was reported to be critical on 5 May, while a person accompanying him died. Valte died of complications as a result of this attack on 20 February 2026. The government said around 1700 houses and numerous vehicles were burned down during the violence.

Government response

A curfew was imposed across eight districts, including non-tribal dominated Imphal West, Kakching, Thoubal, Jiribam, and Bishnupur districts, as well as tribal-dominated Churachandpur, Kangpokpi, and Tengnoupal districts.

The Manipur government issued a shoot at sight order on 4 May. By the end of 3 May 55 columns of the Assam Rifles and the Indian Army were deployed in the region and by 4 May, more than 9,000 people were relocated to safer locations. By 5 May, about 20,000 and by 6 May, 23,000 people had been relocated to safe locations under military supervision. The central government airlifted 5 companies of the Rapid Action Force to the region. Nearly 10,000 army, paramilitary and Central Armed Police Forces were deployed in Manipur. As of 14 May, the total military build up in Manipur stood at 126 army columns and 62 companies of paramilitary forces.

On 4 May, it was widely reported that the Union government had invoked the Article 355 of the Indian Constitution to take over the security situation of Manipur. However, no notification was issued to this effect. Nevertheless, the Home Ministry appointed a security advisor to the Manipur chief minister, Kuldip Singh, who previously headed the CRPF, and an overall commander for the law and order situation, Ashutosh Sinha.

The insertion of troops led to several engagements between hill-based militants and the Indian Reserve Battalion, resulting in at least five militant deaths. In a separate encounter, four militants were killed. By 6 May the situation had calmed down to a degree. According to journalist Moses Lianzachin, at least twenty-seven churches were destroyed or burned down during the violence. As of 9 May, according to the Manipur government, the death toll was over 60 people. The situation was described as "relatively peaceful" on 10 May, with the curfew being relaxed in places, though unknown militants fired on Indian troops in an incident in Manipur's Imphal East district, injuring one.

On 12 May, suspected Kuki militants ambushed policemen in Bishnupur district, killed one officer and injuring five others. In a separate incident, a soldier was stabbed and three Meitei community members kidnapped in Torbung, Churachandpur district. A day later, the security advisor to the Manipur Government Kuldeep Singh raised the total fatality count from the violence to more than 70 deaths. This included the discovery of three Public Works Department labourers found dead in a vehicle in the Churachandpur from unknown causes. He added the number of internally displaced people living in camps had been significantly reduced, and that about 45,000 people had been relocated to other areas.

On 14 May, a delegation of state ministers led by Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh left for New Delhi to meet Union home minister Amit Shah to discuss the situation.

The internet blackout and curfew remained in place on 16 May. Food was also reported to be scarce, with shops, schools and offices closed, and thousands of people stranded in refugee camps. Fresh violence over the weekend had led to further displacements. On 17 May, the internet blackout was extended for five more days.

On March 21, 2026, Yumnam Khemchand Singh held peace meeting between Meitai and Kuki Zo.

Recurrent violence

On 14 May, reports of fresh violence surfaced in the Torbung area, with unidentified arsonists torching more property, including houses and trucks. Five companies of Border Security Forces were deployed. In a separate incident, two Assam Rifles personnel were injured.

Fresh violence occurred on 29 May during which at least five people including one policeman was killed.

On 14 June, at least 11 people were shot, including nine Meitei men. Additionally, 14 were injured in a fresh outbreak. According to doctors and other senior management officials at the state's capital, the latest clash has been so extreme that many bodies have been hard to identify.

A 21 year old Kuki youth was arrested for sharing a post against CM Biren Singh on social media. He was beaten to death on a street in Imphal when he was supposed to be in police custody.

On 7 April 2026, a bomb blast struck a residential house in Tronglaobi Awang Leikai village, in Bishnupur district, killing two small children and critically injuring their mother. Protests lasted for weeks in the Imphal Valley after the incident and frequent clashes with the security forces took place.

Warring groups

The principal Meitei armed organisations involved in violence against Kuki-Zo communities were Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun. Both organisations enjoyed documented state patronage, were active participants in the 3 May counter-rallies, and continued operating in the months that followed with what appears to have been impunity. Surrendered cadres of Meitei insurgent groups officially classified as Valley-based Insurgent Groups (VBIGs) were believed by Indian Army intelligence to have trained civilian mobs in the use of looted military arms, and approximately 100 active VBIG cadres were assessed to have crossed from Myanmar to fight on the Meitei side.

Although Arambai Tenggol announced its formal dissolution on 26 May 2023, its cadres were spotted in September 2023 dressed in police commando uniforms and attempting to break through security checkpoints at Pallel, a development that illustrated both the organisation's continued operational capacity and the porousness of the boundary between the state's security forces and the militias operating in its name.

Kuki-Zo armed groups, principally the Kuki National Army and affiliated organisations operating under the Suspension of Operations framework, fought primarily in defence of Kuki villages and hill areas. The UN Human Rights Office condemned threats against human rights defender Babloo Loitongbam by Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun, and called on Indian authorities to hold those responsible accountable.

Sexual violence

The case that attracted the most significant national attention involved two Kuki women, one in her forties and one in her twenties, who were attacked on 4 May 2023 in the Kangpokpi district. A mob removed them from police custody, stripped and paraded them naked before a crowd, sexually assaulted them, and gang-raped the younger woman. Their father and teenage brother, who attempted to intervene, were killed prior to the assaults. One of the victims subsequently told journalists that police personnel were present with the mob and had transferred custody of the women to them. A formal complaint was filed, but the Manipur state police registered no case for more than two months. A government-imposed internet blackout prevented the video of the assault from circulating. On 19 July 2023, when footage surfaced and spread widely online, authorities made seven arrests; no arrests had been made during the preceding seventy-six days. The National Commission for Women subsequently disclosed that it had received a complaint regarding the incident in June 2023 but received no response from Manipur state authorities despite forwarding the complaint three times. Additional cases were documented by The Hindu, which reported that Kuki women were stripped, raped, set on fire, and beheaded during mob attacks. In a separately documented incident, an 18-year-old Kuki woman was gang-raped after being identified and handed over by Meitei women to armed men. These cases were subsequently confirmed by independent journalists and by the monitoring panel appointed by the Supreme Court of India. Testimonies gathered by journalists and human rights investigators described women being forced to walk naked for extended distances before crowds who filmed them, as well as acts of deliberate humiliation prior to assault. Medical personnel treating survivors at relief camps documented injuries consistent with prolonged assault and torture. Scholars of ethnic conflict have noted that the use of sexual violence in such contexts functions not as incidental conduct but as a mechanism to destroy community cohesion and render continued co-habitation untenable. The documented involvement of state police in facilitating a number of the attacks was noted by multiple independent investigations.

Casualties and victims

Beyond the mass killings of the initial weeks, systematic targeting of individual Kuki-Zo people continued throughout 2023. A 21-year-old Kuki youth arrested for sharing a social media post critical of Chief Minister Biren Singh was beaten to death on a street in Imphal while in police custody. He was taken off a police vehicle by a mob that state personnel made no attempt to stop, and killed in the open. This case illustrated with particular clarity the complete failure of state law enforcement to protect Kuki lives, and the degree to which mob violence and police complicity had become routine.

Multiple lynchings of Kuki men were documented through the summer of 2023. In at least one case, a Kuki man who had been filmed being lynched was identified, and his family spent weeks trying to recover his body while police declined to assist. Journalists investigating the case were warned off. The killings shared a pattern: Kuki individuals separated from their communities, handed over to or abandoned by police, and killed by mobs who faced no consequences.

Reuters reported that, during the first week of violence, 77 Kukis and 10 Meiteis were killed. The majority of the Kuki deaths were caused by murderous Meitei mobs, who roamed the streets of the Imphal city and other locales in the valley, attacking people in their homes and on the streets. By 14 May, the government's tally of casualties and property damage from the violence stood at 73 dead, 243 injured, 1809 houses burned down, 46,145 people evacuated, 26,358 people taken to 178 relief camps, 3,124 people escorted evacuation flights, and 385 criminal cases registered with the authorities.

On 19 July, a video went viral showing two Kuki women, one aged in her forties and another in her twenties, being stripped, paraded naked on the streets, slapped, sexually assaulted and gang-raped by presumably Meitei men. The women were forcibly taken away from the police station when they were fleeing mob violence. The younger victim was allegedly gang-raped and one of the victims' father and teenage brother were killed by the mob while trying to protect the victim. Despite the complaint being lodged no action was taken by the police for more than 2 months until the video emerged. The Kuki community have accused the police of siding with the Meitei community. The video emerged after more than two months since the incident took place as internet was shut down in Manipur. One of the victims said that they have been “left to the mob by the police”.

On 20 July, Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh defended his decision to curtail Internet access in the state, citing hundreds of similar incidents occurring in the past. The Union government ordered social media platforms to remove all posts showing the viral video. Seven arrests were made in the case, all of them after the viral video surfaced.

The Supreme Court responded within hours after the circulation of the video, warning that the court will intervene if the government fails to act.

After the media reports circulated about the National Commission for Women (NCW) having knowledge of the incident as they received a complaint in the month of June, the chairperson of NCW said that she did not receive a response from authorities in Manipur, even after she forwarded the complaint thrice.

The CBI took over the case on 29 July. On 1 August, the Supreme Court stopped CBI from recording the two women's statements which was scheduled just two hours before the Supreme Court hearing on the case, due to objections by the women.

The home of Babloo Loitongbam, human rights activist and director of Human Rights Alert, was vandalised on 5 October 2023 for his activism. The radical Meitei organisation, Meitei Leepun, issued a "boycott call" to Loitongbam. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said "We are alarmed by threats to human rights defender Babloo Loitongbam by Meitei Leepun and Arambai Tenggol groups in Manipur for speaking out on communal violence since May. We urge authorities to protect him, his family and home, and hold perpetrators accountable".

Forced displacement and relief camps

The violence produced a de facto ethnic partition of Manipur. By June 2023, the state had divided along a line of armed checkpoints and buffer zones separating Meitei and Kuki-Zo areas. Both communities acquired weapons, including firearms looted from state armouries. By October 2023, an estimated 6,000 weapons and 600,000 rounds of ammunition had been taken from police armouries, along with mortars, grenades, bulletproof vests, and police uniforms; only approximately one quarter had been recovered. More than 60,000 people were displaced, the majority of them Kuki-Zo. Entire villages in the Imphal Valley were burned and their populations driven into relief camps, many of which remained occupied for months and then years. Journalists who visited the camps documented severe overcrowding, inadequate food and medical supplies, poor sanitation, and an absence of rehabilitation planning by the state government. Women who had survived sexual violence received no counselling or medical follow-up. In March 2025, the Supreme Court of India dispatched six judges to visit the camps and meet with displaced persons whose conditions had not been resolved after nearly two years. Scholars of indigenous rights have noted that the destruction of Kuki-Zo villages threatened not only the physical safety of their inhabitants but the cultural and institutional structures on which those communities depend, including ancestral land tenure and customary village governance. On 18 May 2023, all ten elected Kuki-Zo legislators, including members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, jointly demanded a separate administration for their communities under the Constitution of India, alleging that the violence had received tacit support from the state government led by Chief Minister N. Biren Singh.

Supreme Court proceedings

The Supreme Court of India became the primary institutional check on the Manipur state government's conduct during the crisis, performing a role that the executive branch of the Indian state had entirely abdicated. On 31 July 2023, the Court demanded a complete breakdown of the approximately 6,000 FIRs related to the violence and expressed shock upon learning that police had taken 14 days to register even a zero FIR in the case of the two women who had been gang-raped and paraded naked in public.

On 1 August, the Court described police investigations as tardy and declared that Manipur had undergone an absolute breakdown of the constitutional machinery.

On 7 August 2023, the Supreme Court took suo moto cognisance of the crisis and constituted an independent committee headed by retired Jammu and Kashmir High Court Chief Justice Gita Mittal, including former judges Shalini Phansaklar Joshi and Asha Menon, to oversee relief and rehabilitation. Retired Mumbai Police Commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar was appointed to supervise criminal investigations.

The CBI took over the sexual assault case on 29 July 2023. The two women victims objected to the manner in which their statements were being taken, and the Supreme Court intervened on 1 August to prevent the CBI from recording their statements until appropriate protections were established.

The Supreme Court proceedings represented one of the few institutional spaces in which the evidence of atrocities against Kuki-Zo people was considered seriously. The court's own language, characterising what occurred as a breakdown of constitutional machinery, was stronger than anything uttered by the Prime Minister in the same period.

Political developments

Chief Minister Biren Singh maintained his position throughout the crisis, resisting calls for resignation from opposition parties, Kuki legislators, civil society groups, and international human rights organisations. His responses to media and parliamentary questions were characterised by consistent minimisation of the violence, denial of state responsibility, and deflection onto the immigration framing that had been central to his government's alienation of the Kuki community from the outset.

In the 2024 Indian general election, Singh's BJP lost both parliamentary seats in Manipur to the opposition Indian National Congress, a result widely interpreted as a direct popular verdict against his handling of the ethnic crisis. In November 2024, the National People's Party (NPP) withdrew its support from the Singh government, citing the continued violence and the failure of governance.

In February 2025, facing the imminent prospect of a no-confidence motion in the Assembly, Singh tendered his resignation, after 20 months of continuous violence in which he had denied personal culpability at every turn and during which no senior official or militia leader was successfully prosecuted. Amnesty International noted Singh's resignation while emphasising that accountability for those who perpetrated and enabled the violence had yet to be achieved, and that his departure did not constitute justice for the victims.

President's Rule was declared in Manipur on 13 February 2025, with the Union government assuming direct control through the Governor. During the President's Rule, the violence between Meiteis and Kukis largely subsided, a large portion of the arms stolen by Meitei militias and populace were returned, and the tripartite Suspension of Operations agreement with the Kuki militant groups was renewed. However, very little progress was achieved in resolving the conflict and resettling the displaced people.

On 4 February 2026, President's Rule was revoked and BJP leader Yumnam Khemchand Singh was sworn in as the new Chief Minister of Manipur. On 21 March, Khemchand Singh held talks with Kuki-Zo representatives in a neutral location, the first direct dialogue between the two sides in three years. However, by this time, a new phase of the Manipur conflict had broken out, between the tribal groups Kukis and Nagas, which would intensify in the following months.

Reactions

Domestic

Chief Minister BIREN Singh characterised the violence, at the outset, as a product of misunderstanding and a communication gap between two communities. This framing was immediately condemned by independent observers as a deliberate minimisation of what had been, from the first hours, an organised campaign of mass killing and destruction directed primarily at one community.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained publicly silent on the Manipur crisis for approximately three months. He did not visit Manipur. His silence was widely criticised as signalling either indifference to the killing of Indian citizens or tacit support for the political project being advanced by the Biren Singh government. When he finally spoke on 20 July 2023, prompted only by the public outcry following the emergence of the gang-rape video, his statement was criticised by commentators across the political spectrum as inadequate. It failed to address the broader situation, failed to acknowledge the disproportionate suffering of the Kuki-Zo community, and failed to name any of the groups responsible for the documented atrocities.

All 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs, including BJP members, demanded a separate administration and formally accused the state government of tacit support for the violence against their community.

Peter Machado, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bangalore, expressed grave concern that India's Christian community was being made to feel like a target, noting that churches had already been vandalized, desecrated, or destroyed across the state.

Multiple BJP figures resigned in protest. In July 2023, Bihar BJP leader Vinod Sharma resigned, citing the manner in which Manipur had defamed India. The BJP's Mizoram vice-president, R. Vanramchhuanga, resigned accusing both the state and Union governments of supporting the demolition of churches.

The parliamentary opposition under the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) filed a no-confidence motion on 10 August 2023, primarily to compel Modi to address the crisis directly in Parliament. Modi's resulting speech lasted two hours and was largely devoted to self-congratulation and criticisms of the opposition rather than any engagement with the documented facts of the violence. Opposition MPs walked out in protest. The motion failed as expected given the BJP's parliamentary majority, but the proceedings further documented the central government's deliberate inattention to a crisis in which Indian citizens had been subjected to mass killing, rape, displacement, and religious persecution on a scale not seen in the country in decades.

Protests and demonstrations

On 29 May, hundreds of women from Kuki, Mizo, and Zomi tribes staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, demanding central government intervention. Carrying national flags and placards identifying themselves as Indians and not immigrants, they rejected the government's framing of their communities as foreign infiltrators and called for an end to the eviction campaign from tribal forest lands.

International

Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that the violence exposed deep underlying ethnic and indigenous group tensions and urged Indian authorities to investigate root causes in compliance with international human rights obligations. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed alarm at threats against human rights defender Babloo Loitongbam and called on Indian authorities to protect him and hold those responsible accountable. Loitongbam's home was vandalised on 5 October 2023 by members of Meitei Leepun, which had issued a public boycott call against him for documenting human rights abuses during the conflict. The attack illustrated the systematic intimidation campaign waged against those trying to document the true scale and nature of the violence.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom specifically documented the targeting of Kuki-Zo Christians and called for accountability for the destruction of places of worship. The commission's findings were consistent with those of every other independent international body that examined the Manipur situation.

Media coverage

The mainstream Indian television media largely ignored the Manipur crisis for its first two-and-a-half months, covering it seriously only after the viral video of the public gang rape and parade of two Kuki women forced the story into national consciousness. The pattern of coverage that did exist was documented by The Wire as systematically skewed. Violence by Kuki militants against Meiteis was reported while the far more extensive and documented violence by Meitei mobs against Kuki civilians was largely suppressed or downplayed. This framing reinforced the Hindu nationalist narrative of Hindu victimhood at the hands of Christian aggression, inverting the actual documented casualty ratios and the documented direction of the initial and most sustained violence.

The Editors Guild of India dispatched a fact-finding team whose report documented significant shortcomings and perceptible biases in the coverage of the state media based in Imphal. The state government responded by filing criminal charges against the Editors Guild over its report, an act of institutional intimidation against independent press scrutiny that received almost no coverage in the national media it was intended to silence.

Local Meitei-owned media played an active role in the information war. Editorials in The Sangai Express referred to Kukis as aliens. The Imphal Free Press published an editorial that justified the looting of arms by Meitei civilians from state armouries. At least three of the most widely read English-language newspapers in the region did not report on an incident in which a mob burned a woman and a child alive. The dehumanising language used to describe Kuki people in local media, including terms like aliens, drug smugglers, and foreign infiltrators, mirrored the language used by Chief Minister Singh in his official addresses, a convergence that scholars of media and ethnic conflict have noted as a characteristic feature of state-enabled ethnic violence.

Allegations of state sponsorship

Evidence from multiple independent sources, including investigative journalists, human rights organisations, judicial proceedings, and an audio recording attributed to Chief Minister Biren Singh himself, points to a degree of state complicity in the organisation and facilitation of violence against Kuki-Zo communities that goes well beyond negligence or mismanagement.

The Manipur state government's approach throughout the conflict was characterised by the following documented elements: targeted administrative action against Kuki communities in the months before violence erupted, including the forest eviction drive and the Suspension of Operations withdrawal; the cultivation and arming of Meitei nationalist militias with documented links to the Chief Minister; the deployment of a police force with documented institutional bias toward the Meitei; the imposition of an internet blackout that shielded perpetrators from accountability during the most intense period of killing; public rhetoric by Singh that dehumanised Kukis as criminals and foreigners; and a consistent refusal to take legal action against perpetrators from the Meitei community throughout the first year of violence.

A Kuki civil society body subsequently presented audio recordings to the Supreme Court in which a voice identified as Singh's claims he personally instigated the violence. The respected forensic laboratory Truth Labs assessed with 93% probability that the voice in the recordings belongs to the Chief Minister. The Supreme Court ordered a forensic examination of the tapes. Amnesty International and other international human rights bodies called on Indian authorities to ensure accountability for the alleged acts described in the recordings.

Human Rights Watch, writing in March 2025, concluded that Singh's government had, through multiple deliberate acts, including limiting internet access, endorsing polarising narratives, and patronising armed groups, created conditions that actively inflamed the conflict rather than containing it.