The Supreme Court on Friday proposed setting up special courts to conduct day-to-day trials in cases arising from the 2023 Manipur ethnic violence, in which over 200 people were killed and several hundred injured.Thousands of people got displaced in the ethnic violence that erupted in Manipur on May 3, 2023, following a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ organised in the hill districts to protest against the majority Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana also directed CBI and the state SIT to expeditiously complete pending investigations and ensure that victims received copies of chargesheets.Taking note of the fact that several victims and their families had yet to get copies of the chargesheets filed by CBI and the state SIT, the top court said lawyers will have to be supplied copies of chargesheets within one week of the legal aid advocate contacting them.It allowed legal aid counsel representing the victims to approach the offices of the Chief Justices of the Gauhati and Manipur high courts to obtain the chargesheets.The bench asked Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati — representing the Centre, Manipur Government, CBI, and the state SIT — to furnish details of cases in which investigations were over and chargesheets filed, as well as those in which probes were still on.The information would help to determine the number of special courts required to ensure speedy trials, it noted.The Supreme Court asked the Manipur High Court to examine cases relating to 30 persons missing since the violence broke out in the stateIt asked CBI, the state SIT, and the court-appointed monitoring committee headed by former Maharashtra DGP Dattatray Padsalgikar to file fresh status reports on the probe into violence-related cases.The bench noted that CBI has filed chargesheets in 21 cases while investigations were till on in 11 others. CBI’s closure reports have been accepted in three cases.The SIT was probing 3,020 cases across eight districts of Manipur and chargesheets had been filed in 301 cases and trials commenced in 10. Around 2,924 witnesses have been cited across the cases by the state SIT, it said.Displacement of witnesses, lack of cooperation due to mistrust, language barriers and disruption in collecting digital evidence because of prolonged internet suspension during the violence affected CBI’s investigations, it said, adding the pending investigations must nevertheless be completed within a reasonable time.