A grim silence hangs over the Tamu district in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, where flies swarm over the charred remains of ten resistance fighters, including three teenagers. Their bodies, blackened and swollen in blood-drenched fatigues, were laid out on tarpaulin before being hurriedly cremated on a makeshift wooden pyre stoked by worn-out rubber tyres. The smell of death now lingers where trust once stood.
These were members of the Pa Ka Pha (PKP), a local unit of Myanmar’s People’s Defence Forces (PDF), fighting against the military junta that seized power in 2021. The PKP reports to the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s government-in-exile formed by deposed lawmakers and supported by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. The NUG says these young men were not killed in combat — they were executed.
On May 14, India’s Assam Rifles (AR) claimed its patrol along Manipur’s border with Myanmar intercepted and neutralized “suspected insurgents” carrying “war-like stores.” The official statement described the action as based on “specific intelligence.”
But the NUG challenges this account, accusing Indian forces of capturing the fighters and carrying out extrajudicial killings in or near Tamu — not on Indian soil. The incident, the NUG says, marks a serious breach of a long-standing unspoken arrangement between Indian border units and Myanmar’s resistance networks: coexistence through mutual non-interference.
“This was not a battlefield death. This was a message,” said Thida, a member of the Tamu-based People’s Administration Team, who organized the cremation. “Our fighters are shaken, but the refugees are terrified. This was never supposed to happen.”
Manipur, where the AR unit was based, has been locked in its own civil strife, with clashes between ethnic groups escalating since 2023. Indian authorities have increasingly linked the unrest to Myanmar-origin migrants, painting them as destabilizing elements in an already fragile region. That narrative has fueled the Indian government’s push to seal the once-open border, cutting off communities who have historically lived and moved freely across both sides.
Analysts warn that the killing of the ten rebels could unravel years of implicit diplomatic balance along the 1,600-km Indo-Myanmar frontier, where India avoided deep entanglement in Myanmar’s post-coup civil war. That calculus may now be shifting.
“New Delhi has made a choice here — one that doesn’t just alienate the NUG and the PDF, but also sends a chilling signal to the tens of thousands of refugees depending on India for shelter and survival,” said a South Asian security analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In border villages now carved apart by a growing fence, whispers of betrayal and fear travel faster than official statements.
“We used to feel safe because India was here,” Thida said quietly. “But now, the fear is that this may only be the beginning. That this silent war is no longer so silent.”
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