evidence: "On the night of May 3 at 8pm, people wearing black shirts attacked us. We fired blanks, which forced them to retreat but just for some time," said 43-year-old L Ngampao Khongsai, who had been living in Imphal’s Khongsai Veng area, a predominantly Kuki-Zo area. [...] In the hill areas and closer to the foothills, mobs attacked Meitei neighbourhoods. A pregnant Warepam Rameshwori was forced to flee her village. "Our village is at the foothills in Tronglaobi Maning Leikai [in Bishnupur district] surrounded by Kuki villages. On May 3, the firing started. … [The Kukis] had sophisticated weapons and started firing at us, and we didn’t have any weapons to defend, so we ran away from there and found shelter at a relative’s home," she said. [...] What Lieutenant General Singh said had begun to play out by December when I last reported from Manipur. Videos of gun-toting men in the valley and the hills had proliferated on social media. The armed "volunteers" were being valorised on social media while in personal spaces, many spoke of the worries of young men being lured or recruited by militias, spawning a never-ending cycle of attack, revenge and turf war.