The Kuki Organisation for Human Right Trust has told the Supreme Court that the Manipur Police sent only brief, edited portions of an audio recording to the National Forensic Science University, rather than the full 48-minute file allegedly linking former Chief Minister N Biren Singh to the state’s ethnic violence, according to a report in Live Law on Friday.
These claims were made in an affidavit submitted in response to the forensic laboratory’s October report, which had stated that the clips it received showed signs of alteration and were not suitable for scientific voice comparison. Because of this, the laboratory said it was unable to determine whether the voice in the recordings belonged to Singh.
In its affidavit, the Kuki organisation alleged that instead of providing the complete 48-minute-46-second recording, the authorities had forwarded only four short snippets of 30 seconds, 1 minute 28 seconds, 36 seconds and 1 minute 47 seconds. The group argued that sending only these excerpts amounted to an incomplete and distorted presentation of the evidence, Scroll.in reported.
It further contended that this kind of selective submission raised serious doubts about the integrity of the authorities’ actions and could compromise the neutrality of the investigation.
The Supreme Court is currently hearing the organisation’s petition seeking an independent probe into the audio clips that purportedly contain Singh’s voice.
In the alleged 2023 audio recordings, a voice said to resemble that of N Biren Singh is heard claiming responsibility for the origins of the conflict, boasting that he ignored Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s reported directive not to deploy explosives, and suggesting that he protected those involved in looting thousands of weapons from police armouries.
The ethnic violence between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities, which began in May 2023, has resulted in at least 260 deaths and displaced over 59,000 people, with occasional spikes in unrest during 2024. President’s Rule was imposed in February after Singh stepped down.
In its affidavit, the Kuki organisation stated that it had submitted the entire 48-minute-46-second audio file to the Supreme Court through a supplementary affidavit on January 22. The court had then instructed that the complete recording be examined by a forensic laboratory. However, according to the organisation, the Manipur Police’s Cyber Crime unit forwarded only four short audio segments to the National Forensic Science University. The petitioner said neither it nor its legal counsel had been informed that only these extracts had been provided.
The laboratory reportedly told the court that it could not determine the recording’s continuity or verify its authenticity, and further indicated that the clips showed signs of tampering and were not reliable enough for a scientific voice comparison.
By contrast, a separate analysis conducted by Truth Labs in January had concluded that the full 50-minute recording showed no signs of editing and suggested a 93% probability that the voice matched the provided control sample.
The organisation reiterated its request for a court-supervised Special Investigation Team to look into the recording and the wider allegations connected to it.
In August, the Supreme Court directed that the audio material be sent again—this time to the National Forensic Science University in Gandhinagar—for a fresh assessment of its authenticity. At that stage, the court said the new examination should determine whether the recordings had been altered in any way and whether the voices in the disputed clips matched the admitted samples, offering a definitive conclusion on whether the same speaker appeared across the files.
The laboratory was asked to submit its report directly to the court in a sealed cover.