Narco trade to extorting from the villagers Terror funding in place ?

Terror funding. And it spreads far and wide. From narco trade including mass scale poppy cultivation in the hills, to the huge extortion notices slapped on transporters to now dipping their hands in the compensation earmarked for villagers, whose land and homestead stood to be affected for the National Highway expansion work and the hands and reach of groups under the SoO pact are spread far and wide. NDTV has done a good job in coming out with a damning report on how villagers were made to append their signatures on blank papers by the finance secretary of the Kuki National Front (KNF) with the addendum that the signatures were necessary if they wanted to get any compensation money. The KNF was to take 5 percent of the money earmarked for each affected villager. So it was that a villager, a beneficiary, received Rs 3.8 lakh out of the Rs 17 lakh he was supposed to get. So who has pocketed the remaining Rs 13.2 lakh ? Does not need a mathematical genius to work out that the villager in  question has received only about 22 or so percent of the Rs 17 lakh he was supposed to get and this means that he has been literally robbed of 78 percent of the total amount due to him. So who is the culprit ? Or will the blank paper the villagers were asked or ordered to sign going to be proof that the villagers had willingly donated the amount due to them ? The story broken by NDTV could just be the tip of the iceberg and it is important to demonstrate that the Government of India has taken due note of the story and accordingly take up due course of action. Making the story all that more interesting is the fact that the KNF, an outfit which is under the SoO pact, is central to it all and the question is whether the Government will treat the matter with kid’s glove as the name of an outfit with which it sees eye to eye via the said pact, features prominently in the story. Go back to the points of agreement that were signed when the SoO pact was first inked with the State Government and the Central Government back in 2008 and any act that seems to run counter to the charter of agreements should be taken up with the seriousness it deserves. The story itself and the manner in which some villagers have come forward to furnish their side is more than an indication that cadres under the SoO pact have been given the long rope, either deliberately or through sheer negligence and this is something which does not sit well with anything that comes close to the understanding of suspending confrontations. And this is where the hand of a deliberate design cannot be wished away.
Compensation to be paid to the affected people due to the road widening exercise and five percent of it to go a group under the SoO pact and this perfectly fits well with the story under the heading ‘Even Kukis oppose SoO extension’, of a news story datelined July 1 and carried by The Sangai Express. The news story from NDTV should also be understood in the backdrop of the growing demand to remove all SoO camps which reportedly fall under the land of the Nagas and the ongoing stir of the Foothills Naga Coordination Committee. A stir which has managed to elicit the support of many other Naga organisations, a voice which Delhi cannot and should not brush under the carpet. With funds collected from different sources, including the latest story of getting their hands in the pie of the villagers affected by the road expansion work, one can easily work out from where the guns used by the Kuki militants in the ongoing conflict have come from. A point on which Union Home Minister Amit Shah was stoically quiet while coming out strongly against the guns that were looted from the police armouries located in the valley areas of Manipur. Yet there is still the lingering question of whether the affected lands are patta land or forest land. Was the said compensation worked out as per the procedures laid down in the National Highway Acquisition process ? When was the land to be affected surveyed ? Did the Government of Manipur give the nod for the financial compensation and if yes when was it given ? The matter deserves a thorough and impartial probe and the stress on the word impartial should be understood.