Flies hovered over the blackened and swollen our bodies of males and boys, mendacity side-by-side on a chunk of tarpaulin, in blood-soaked fight fatigues, amid preparations for a rushed cremation within the Tamu district of Myanmar’s Sagaing area, bordering India.
Rapidly organized wood logs fashioned the bottom of the mass pyre, with a number of worn-out rubber tyres burning alongside to maintain the fireplace, the orange and inexperienced wreaths simply out of attain of the flames.
Among the many 10 members of the Pa Ka Pha (PKP), a part of the bigger Individuals’s Defence Forces (PDF), killed by the Indian Military on Might 14, three had been youngsters.
The PKP comes below the command of the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s government-in-exile, comprising lawmakers eliminated within the 2021 coup, together with legislators from Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nationwide League for Democracy celebration.
It largely assists the PDF – a community of civilian militia teams in opposition to the navy authorities – which serves, in impact, because the NUG’s military.
The Indian Military said that on Might 14, a battalion of the nation’s Assam Rifles (AR) paramilitary pressure patrolling a border put up within the northeast Indian state of Manipur, killed 10 males armed with “war-like shops” who had been “suspected to be concerned in cross-border rebel actions”. The battalion, the Indian Military mentioned, was “appearing on particular intelligence”.
The Indian troopers had been stationed on the border in Chandel, a district contiguous with Tamu on the Myanmar aspect of the frontier. Manipur has been torn by a civil battle between ethnic teams for the previous two years, and Indian authorities have usually accused migrants from Myanmar of stoking these tensions.
Nonetheless, disputing the Indian model of the Might 14 occasions, the exiled NUG mentioned its cadres had been “not killed in an armed encounter inside Indian territory”. As an alternative, it mentioned in an announcement, they had been “captured, tortured and summarily executed by” Indian Military personnel.
For practically 5 years for the reason that coup, political analysts and battle observers say that resistance teams working in Myanmar, alongside the 1,600km-long (994 miles) border with India, have shared an understanding with Indian forces, below which each side successfully minded their very own enterprise.
That has now modified with the killings in Tamu, sending shockwaves by way of the exiled NUG, dozens of insurgent armed teams and hundreds of refugees who fled the battle in Myanmar to search out shelter in northeastern Indian states. They now concern a spillover alongside the broader frontier.
“Fighters are in panic, however the refugees are extra anxious – all of them really feel unsafe now,” mentioned Thida*, who works with the Tamu Pa Ah Pha, or the Individuals’s Administration Workforce, and organised the rebels’ funeral on Might 16. She requested to be recognized by a pseudonym.
In the meantime, New Delhi has moved over the previous 12 months to fence the international border with Myanmar, dividing transnational ethnic communities who’ve loved open-border motion for generations, earlier than India and Myanmar gained freedom from British rule within the late Nineteen Forties.
“We felt secure [with India in our neighbourhood],” mentioned Thida. “However after this incident, we now have develop into very anxious, , that comparable issues might observe up from the Indian forces.”
“This by no means occurred in 4 years [since the armed uprising against the coup], however now, it has occurred,” she instructed Al Jazeera. “So, as soon as there’s a first time, there might be a second or a 3rd time, too. That’s the greatest fear.”
‘Proactive operation or retaliation?’
On Might 12, the ten cadres of the PKP arrived at their newly established camp in Tamu after their earlier place was uncovered to the Myanmar navy. A senior NUG official and two locals primarily based in Tamu independently instructed Al Jazeera that that they had alerted the Indian Military of their presence prematurely.
“The AR personnel visited the brand new campsite [on May 12],” claimed Thida. “They had been knowledgeable of our each step.”
What adopted over the subsequent 4 days couldn’t be verified independently, with conflicting variations rising from Indian officers and the NUG. There are additionally contradictions within the narratives put out by Indian officers.
On Might 14, the Indian Military’s japanese command claimed that its troops acted on “intelligence”, however “had been fired upon by suspected cadres”, and killed 10 cadres in a gunfight within the New Samtal space of the Chandel district.
Two days later, on Might 16, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of Defence mentioned that “a patrol of Assam Rifles” was fired upon. In retaliation, they killed “10 people, sporting camouflage fatigues”, and recovered seven AK-47 rifles in addition to a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
5 days later, on Might 21, the Defence Ministry recognized the killed males as cadres of the PKP. The ministry spokesperson additional famous that “a patrol out to sanitise the realm, the place fence building is below approach alongside the [border], got here below intense automated fireplace”, with the intent “to trigger extreme hurt to building employees or troops of Assam Rifles to discourage the fencing work”.
Talking with Al Jazeera, a retired Indian authorities official, who has suggested New Delhi on its Myanmar coverage for a decade, identified the dissonance within the Indian variations: Did Indian troopers reply proactively to intelligence alerts, or had been they reacting to an assault from the rebels from Myanmar?
“It’s tough to make sense of those killings. That is one thing that has occurred in opposition to the run of play,” the retired official, who requested anonymity to talk, mentioned. The contradictions, he mentioned, steered that “a mistake occurred, maybe within the fog of battle”.
“It can’t be each a proactive operation and retaliation.”
Al Jazeera requested feedback from the Indian Military on questions across the operation, first on Might 26, after which once more on Might 30, however has but to obtain a response.
Thura, an officer with the PDF in Sagaing, the northwest Myanmar area the place Tamu is simply too, mentioned, “The [PKP cadres] should not fight educated, and even armed sufficient to think about taking over knowledgeable military”.
![A photo of one of the rebel fighters killed by Indian security forces [Courtesy of the National Unity Government of Myanmar]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/PKP-cadre-1748844189.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C702&quality=80)
‘Making the most of our battle’
Once they had been knowledgeable by the Indian Military of the deaths on Might 16, native Tamu authorities rushed to the Indian aspect.
“Assam Rifles had already ready a docket of paperwork,” mentioned a Tamu official, who was coordinating the our bodies’ handover, and requested anonymity. “We had been pressured to signal the false paperwork, or they threatened to not give the corpses of martyrs.”
Al Jazeera has reviewed three paperwork from the docket, which indicate consent to the border fencing and underline that the PDF cadres had been killed in a gunfight in Indian territory.
Thida, from the Tamu’s Individuals’s Administration Workforce, and NUG officers, instructed Al Jazeera that they’ve repeatedly requested Indian officers to rethink the border fencing.
“For the final month, we now have been requesting the Indian Military to talk with our ministry [referring to the exiled NUG] and have a gathering. Till then, cease the border fencing course of,” she mentioned.
Bewildered by the killings, Thida mentioned, “It’s simple to take benefit whereas our nation is in such a disaster. And, to be trustworthy, we can not do something about it. We’re the rebels in our personal nation — how can we decide fights with the massive Indian Military?”
Above all, Thida mentioned she was heartbroken. “The state of corpses was horrific. Bugs had been rising contained in the physique,” she recalled. “If nothing, Indian forces ought to have respect for our lifeless.”
Border fencing anxieties
Angshuman Choudhury, a researcher targeted on Myanmar and northeast India, mentioned that battle observers “are befuddled by these killings in Tamu”.
“It’s counterintuitive and shouldn’t have occurred by any measure,” he mentioned.
The principle level of dispute, the border fencing, is an age-old challenge, famous Choudhary. “It has all the time induced friction alongside the border. And really violent fiction within the sense of intense territorial misunderstandings from teams on both aspect,” he mentioned.
When New Delhi first moved final 12 months to finish the free motion regime, which permits cross-border motion to inhabitants, Indigenous communities throughout India’s northeastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh had been left surprised. Members of those communities reside on each side of the border with Myanmar – and have for hundreds of years.
Political analysts and lecturers observe that the border communities on both aspect reconciled with the thought of India and Myanmar due to the liberty to journey forwards and backwards. Erecting bodily infrastructure triggers a type of anxiousness in these transnational communities that demarcation on maps doesn’t, argued Choudhary.
“By fencing, India is creating a very new type of anxieties that didn’t even exist within the Nineteen Forties, the speedy post-colonial interval,” Choudhary mentioned. “It’ll create completely pointless types of instability, ugliness, and widen the prevailing fault traces.”
Final 12 months, the Indian residence minister, Amit Shah, mentioned that border fencing would guarantee India’s “inside safety” and “preserve the demographic construction” of the areas bordering Myanmar, in a transfer broadly seen as a response to the conflict in Manipur.
Since Might 2023, ongoing ethnic violence between the Meitei majority and the Kuki and Naga minority communities has killed greater than 250 individuals and displaced hundreds. The state administration has confronted allegations of exacerbating the unrest to strengthen its help among the many Meitei inhabitants, which the federal government has denied.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) authorities and the Manipur state authorities, additionally below the BJP, have blamed the disaster in Manipur partly on undocumented migrants from Myanmar, whom they accuse of deepening ethnic tensions.
Now, with the killings in Tamu, Choudhary mentioned that Indian safety forces had a brand new frontier of discontent, alongside a border the place quite a few armed teams against Myanmar’s ruling navy have operated — till now, in relative peace with Indian troops.
The deaths, he mentioned, might change the foundations of engagement between Indian forces and people teams. “Keep in mind, different insurgent teams [in Myanmar] are additionally watching this carefully,” he mentioned. “These points can spiral shortly.”