The sight of a dozen or more coffins being laid in a row while young, helpless widows and elderly grief-stricken parents come to terms with their loss is an image that is both outrageous and painful. The dead were ordinary citizens going home to their village in Nagaland after work. In one shattering moment, their lives were extinguished; just like that. For the Army’s special unit, it was an intelligence error to which they overreacted. What’s the source of that information? 

Surely, the government cannot hide behind the smokescreen of “classified information”. There have been too many killings based on such wrong intelligence in Nagaland, Manipur and Assam. With every such encounter in which the innocent are mowed down, the clamour for revocation of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) grows strident — but is rarely sustained. Some years ago, all the northeastern states had come together to demand the annulment of this Act. That remained in the realm of yet another “demand”…

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/nagaland-massacre-killing-based-on-wrong-intelligence-7664842/

More articles by Patricia Mukhim

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