A police officer arrived at the spot but behaved in a hostile manner. “There are militants from Myanmar present there. They will shoot you down,” he yelled. When we asked who these militants were, he said they were Kukis. While there are no official orders banning anyone from entering these regions, the Metei village volunteers who surrounded us explained how dangerous it was to venture into the village. They pointed to bunkers uphill through binoculars saying that they belonged to Kuki militants.
In reality, the bunkers belonged to the Indian Army’s Gorkha Regiments (GR). When the mob began to grow in strength and it became clear that the vigilante group wouldn’t allow us to travel to Khopibung, we took an uphill road to the right which led to a GR bunker, where an officer confirmed that other bunkers too belonged to them.
The crazy amount of preschooler level disinformation is dumbfounding.