Lalruhlu, editor of the Hmar-language newspaper Shan, was shot and killed along with three companions in the northeastern state of Manipur. Police said they suspected separatist militants of carrying out the attack. “The four victims riding on two scooters were stopped by the militants taken to a nearby forest and shot at point-blank range,” Manipur Police Superintendent Ashutosh Sinha told the Press Trust of India.
According to CPJ’s sources, a militant group calling itself the Hmar Revolutionary Front issued a press release claiming responsibility for the killings. The statement stated that Lalruhlu, a member of the Hmar tribe, was murdered not for his work as a journalist, but because he was involved with a competing militant group. Manipur is plagued by separatist and ethnic violence.