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New Delhi: Kilokri is your usual bustling locality in Southeast Delhi. Previously existing as an address, the locality now finds itself busy with reporters, camerapersons, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) cadre and several gazes aimed at a particular building.

Late on September 6, Chongtham Vikram Singh stepped out of his third-floor apartment of this building in Kilokri. Outside, a group of men were drinking and causing loud disturbance.

Singh, a 55-year-old guitarist and music teacher from Manipur, objected. What began as a dispute downstairs ended with his death.

According to Delhi Police’s statement, Singh was assaulted after confronting the group. As he tried to return home, the men allegedly chased him into his building and up the stairs, where he was beaten outside the apartment where his wife and son were waiting. By morning, Singh was dead.

Seven individuals have been arrested and a juvenile apprehended in connection with the killing. But almost immediately, his death came to represent something beyond the sequence of events now being investigated by the Delhi Police.

A life built around music in Delhi over two decades

For nearly two decades, Singh had built a life around music in Delhi. That life was rooted in Kilokari, a densely packed neighbourhood near Ashram where small businesses and eateries sit alongside apartment buildings. But today, his death has shocked many, especially those northeastern people who pack their whole lives in suitcases only to call Delhi their home.

For many from India’s Northeast living in the capital, the killing of a Manipuri man outside his own home revived a familiar fear; that even after decades of making lives in Delhi, belonging here remains conditional.

“Nothing like this has ever happened here. I have been living here for 50 years, that’s all my life, I raised my children here, and have seen the area growingly accommodate people from the northeast here. Not just as tenants but as shop owners, business owners, wholly integrated into Kilokri” says Govind, an auto-driver living in the area. Another local, Ramesh, who owns a small spare parts shop in the area was very disturbed by the killing.

Chongtham Vikram Singh was a........

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