New Delhi/Imphal:

A woman who was released on bail after her arrest in Manipur in August last year over her expired Norwegian passport and Indian e-visa is allegedly a top member of a Myanmar-based insurgent group, people with direct knowledge of the matter told NDTV.

The insurgent group is fighting the junta in Myanmar’s Chin State, just across the border from Mizoram and Manipur, sources said.

Mya Kyay Mon, 52, was found walking “suspiciously” at a market in Manipur’s capital Imphal on October 23, sources said, adding how she continued to stay on with expired documents and what she was doing in violence-hit Manipur are under investigation.

With Imphal on high alert amid the ethnic tensions between the Meiteis and the Kuki tribes following months-long violence, the police questioned Ms Mon after they found her at the market. She showed her travel papers that turned out to be expired, sources said.

She was taken to the foreigners detention centre and is kept there since then, following an order by the Manipur government to the state police chief and the jail superintendent. NDTV has seen a verified copy of the Home Commissioner T Ranjit Singh’s letter to the police chief and the jail superintendent.

“It is claimed she came to Imphal to appear in a legal case concerning expired documents. But we are exploring all angles, including the allegation that she’s a top member of a Myanmar-based insurgent group and has links with some armed elements in the hill district Churachandpur,” a senior police officer who has direct knowledge of the matter told NDTV, requesting anonymity.

Some 25 hill-based Kuki insurgent groups have signed the suspension of operations (SoO) agreement with the centre and the state government. These insurgent groups along with some civil society organisations in valley-majority Imphal have come under intense scrutiny over alleged participation in the ethnic violence that has killed over 180 and left thousands internally displaced.

Ms Mon was first detained by the Assam Rifles during routine checking in August last year on the highway connecting Imphal with the border trading town Moreh. The Assam Rifles in a statement had said they found an expired Norwegian passport and an Indian e-visa, and she came to India in May 2019.

Subsequently, the Manipur Police took her into custody and kept her in Imphal’s central jail, until she got bail in February this year, after which an Imphal-based human rights organisation run by local activist Babloo Loitongbam helped her find a women’s shelter home to stay.

“The case of Ms Mya Kyay Mon, a Norwegian citizen of Myanmar origin, was brought to the attention of HRA (Human Rights Alert) by the Myanmar language instructor of the Centre for Myanmar Studies of Manipur University… HRA took up her case as a ‘woman in distress case’ and informed the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Delhi. Thereafter, she was issued a fresh Norwegian passport as her old one had expired,” HRA executive director Mr Loitongbam said in a statement in response to local media reports on the matter.

“… In the wake of the ethnic unrest in Manipur and when the NGO (shelter home) expressed their discomfort in keeping her, we organised an air ticket for her to get out of the state. We have been informed she was summoned by the court to appear in her pending trial in Manipur,” Mr Loitongbam said in the statement, adding they did not know Ms Mon before and after her arrest in August last year, until the moment they met her in the Imphal jail.

The activist, who is also a fierce critic of Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh and whose house was vandalised by a mob earlier this month over his comments on two Meitei organisations, said HRA only gave “legal and humanitarian services” when requested by a woman in distress “as per our mandate as an organisation defending the human rights for all.”

A statement purportedly given by Ms Mon to the media said she left Manipur in May when ethnic violence broke out and lived in Delhi for two months. She then went to Punjab for four weeks and returned to Delhi. She went to Rajasthan next, from where in October she came to Kolkata and proceeded on to Dimapur. Finally, she came to Imphal to meet members of the Manipur Human Rights Commission on October 11, the statement said. But she couldn’t meet them and left Imphal, only to return on October 23, the day she went to the market in Imphal from where she was detained by the police. NDTV could not independently verify this statement.

Though the Manipur ethnic violence between the Kuki tribes and the Meiteis is said to be over the Meities’ demand for inclusion under the Scheduled Tribes category, many leaders including Union Minister Home Minister Amit Shah and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar have said entry of illegal immigrants is one of the main factors behind the unrest in the northeast state, which is ruled by the BJP.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has said it is looking into an alleged transnational conspiracy involving terror groups hiding in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Manipur to exploit the ethnic violence in the northeast state.