Minor killed in police firing in Manipur

Imphal: Tension gripped Lilong town in Manipur’s Thoubal district after police shot dead a minor boy and injured two people while dispersing a group of protesters on Friday evening.
Taking preemptive action, the district administration clamped indefinite curfew on a large portion of Lilong, including the Imphal-Moreh section of NH-39, since the incident.
Trouble began when a local group, Lilong Political Unified Link (LPUL), called an indefinite bandh in Thoubal district from Friday morning demanding that the government widen a 4-km stretch of the NH-39 from Lilong bridge to the Waithou area.
As bandh supporters blocked traffic along the highway, police fired mock bombs, teargas shells and rubber bullets on Friday afternoon to disperse them.
The tussle turned ugly in the evening when the minor, Md Ilyas Khan (12), was killed and two others injured in police firing. The agitators said the boy, a Class VII student, was killed after being arrested by the cops.
Angry locals have not taken the boy’s body from the mortuary of a government hospital.
Defying the curfew, locals burnt logs and tyres at Lilong on Saturday.