First Kuki village in Churachandpur resettled 3 years after conflict began

Guwahati language

The first Kuki village in Manipur’s Churachandpur district was resettled after three years on Thursday, May 28, 2026, but only men returned from the relief camp while their families continued to live there.

A village close to the “buffer zone,” Khodang is near where Churachandpur district meets the Bishnupur and Kakching districts of the Imphal Valley. The strip of land of varying widths separating the Meitei-dominated valley from the surrounding Kuki-dominated hills is called the buffer zone.

After the ethnic conflict between the Kuki-Zo and Meitei people broke out on May 3, 2023, around 200 Khodang people had fled deep into the Churachandpur district.

The district administration assisted in the resettlement process. Local MLA Paolienlal Haokip cut the ribbon to open the village for settlement.

Khodang village secretary M. Sonsei Haokip said that after a gang set fire to most of the houses, the villagers fled and took shelter in a relief camp in Churachandpur, the district headquarters.

“We have 45 families here. We have rebuilt our houses with the ₹ 1.7 lakh that the government has provided to each family,” he told reporters.

He said only male members of a few families returned to settle in their new-look homes. Others, including women and children, would gradually return.

More than 260 people have died in ethnic violence and an estimated 62,000 people have been internally displaced. Many people remain in relief camps, mostly those who fled villages close to the “buffer zone”.