Over 100 students from Bihar brought back from violence-hit Manipur

Patna: More than 100 students from Bihar were on Tuesday brought back from Manipur which has been in throes of violence for some time.

According to an official, a special flight commissioned by the Nitish Kumar government carried 142 students from Bihar, besides another 21 from the neighbouring state of Jharkhand.

The students from Jharkhand will be ferried to their home state by bus and the plane landed at the Patna airport around noon.

A sense of relief was writ large on the boys and girls who had gone to the strife-torn northeastern state to pursue higher studies.

They were, however, unanimous in asserting that no student from outside Manipur was targeted during the violence.

“We did not even get to see the mayhem ourselves, though sounds of gunshots and exploding bombs, which we heard inside our hostel rooms, did cause some fright,” a girl student from Munger said.

Another student said they were strictly instructed by their college authorities not to venture out until arrangements were in place for their journey back home.

“From what we got to understand, locals were fighting among themselves and there was no perceptible sentiment directed against those of us from outside Manipur. Though when you get caught up in a restive area away from home, it leads to anxiety,” another student confessed.

According to the officials of the Bihar government, the resident commissioner in New Delhi has been advised by the chief minister to remain in touch with authorities in Manipur and do the needful if more people from the state are learnt to be in need of help in the restive north-eastern province.

However, the situation across Manipur is improving with no fresh reports of any untoward incident, while curfew has been relaxed in all the 11 districts where it was clamped, officials said on Tuesday.

Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh had on Monday said that 60 people were killed, 231 injured and 1,700 houses, including religious places, burnt in the ethnic violence that rocked the northeastern state in the past few days.

Violent clashes broke out between tribals and people belonging to the majority Meitei community in Manipur on Wednesday, displacing thousands of people.

The clashes erupted after a 'Tribal Solidarity March' was organised in the ten hill districts to protest against the Meitei community's demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.

Meiteis account for about 53 per cent of Manipur's population and live mostly in the Imphal valley.

Tribals -- Nagas and Kukis -- constitute another 40 per cent of the population and reside mostly in the hill districts.