CHUNGKHAM TARATOMBI Devi’s fight for justice has yielded results. Fourteen months after her son Chungkham Sanjit Singh Meitei was killed in a fake encounter by Manipur Police, the CBI has filed a chargesheet against nine of the 14 accused policemen. Exposés in TEHELKA by Teresa Rehman (Murder in Plain Sight, 8 August 2009) and Shoma Chaudhury (Life in a Shadow Land, 15 August 2009) had detailed the coldblooded murder. Photographs published along with the story revealed the entire sequence of Sanjit’s death.

The chargesheet filed by the CBI on 9 September this year in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Imphal, corroborates TEHELKA’s findings. It reveals how, on 23 July 2009, commandos led by then Imphal City Police Station in-charge Munal Singh picked up Sanjit from BT Road, took him inside the storeroom of a pharmacy and shot him dead. The CBI also found out that the 9 mm Mauser gun found on Sanjit was planted by the police.