The National Investigation Agency on Saturday arrested a person from Manipur’s Churachandpur district in connection with the June 21 Kwakta bomb blast case that killed three civilians, The Hindu reported.

Kwakta lies in the buffer zone between the Kuki inhabited-Churachandpur and Meitei-dominated Bishnupur district. The state has been wracked by ethnic violence between the Meiteis and the Kukis since May 3 that has killed over 200 people and displaced at least 60,000 so far.

The National Investigation Agency arrested Seiminlun Gangte, one of the prime accused in the Kwakta bomb blast case, and brought him to Delhi, The Hindu reported citing Manipur Police.

In the document submitted to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security seeking permission to fly from Imphal airport to Delhi, the investigative agency said that the case is related to a conspiracy by Chin-Kuki-Mizo militant groups and their counterparts based in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The National Investigation Agency has alleged that these militant groups are carrying out terror attacks in Manipur with an intention “to create a separate state inhabited by the Chin-Kuku Mizo tribes by carving out territories from India, Bangladesh and Myanmar and to wage a war against [the] Government of India”.

However, Seiminlun Gangte’s wife Mangshi Seiminlun said that he was being falsely accused in the case. “It is all lies,” she told Scroll. “He is innocent and has no relation with the charge by NIA. The charges are fake.”

Seiminlun Gangte worked as a private teacher in Kwakta before the ethnic unrest gripped the state. Since then he had been ferrying goods for the founder of the school who is also proprietor of a hardware store in Kwakta.

Saturday’s arrest comes after the National Investigation Agency on September 23 had accused insurgent groups banned in India operating out of Myanmar of carrying out attacks on Indian security forces and members of opposing ethnic groups in the northeastern state.

The statement came after the central agency arrested a “trained operative” of the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur, a separatist group, from Imphal. He has been identified as 45-year-old Moirangthem Anand Singh.

Singh was among the five persons arrested by the security forces in Imphal on September 16 for allegedly carrying sophisticated firearms and wearing camouflage uniforms. They were charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act as well as sections of the Indian Penal Code.

The central agency has also alleged that insurgent groups are recruiting overground workers, cadres and sympathisers to exploit the current unrest in Manipur. “And for this purpose, the Myanmar-based leadership are collecting arms, ammunitions and explosives by unlawful means, including plunder and pillage of government facilities and resources,” the agency had said.