The polling station, Tampi in Chakpikarong, had been identified as sensitive, and an apprehensive poll panel had set up a webcam to monitor the proceedings as they unfolded. Both the NSCN-IM and the new Naga militant group Zeliangrong United Front (ZUF) are active in Chandel, in particular in Chakpikarong subdivision.

An estimated 82 per cent turned out as Manipur became the first state to vote in the prolonged election process underway for new assemblies in five states. Polling was peaceful in the rest of the state.

A CRPF man, four election officials and a woman who could have been a voter were killed after an underground militant allegedly began to shoot randomly outside the polling booth at 12.20 pm, police said. The CRPF returned fire, killing the alleged shooter, whom it identified subsequently as Nula Behensingh of nearby Chakpikarong Bazar, a suspected NSCN-IM member. A 9 mm pistol was found on Behensingh.

The shootout and subsequent chaos -- which election officials said lasted some 15-20 minutes -- was witnessed in part by state election commissioner P C Lawmkunga, who watched live streaming pictures along with a handful of senior officials in the CEO's control room in the high security old secretariat in Imphal.

"Our camera was placed inside the booth. The incident took place right outside," said a senior election official who saw the pictures. "What we saw was a man in civilian clothes approach the room to intimidate some voters. He didn't seem to be alone but with a group... we are not sure. Suddenly he opened fire and some of the CRPF personnel outside retaliated. After this everything was a blur, there were people running helter skelter. We could not see the actual shooting of the people as there was a near-stampede in the booth."

Election commissioner Lawmkunga was unavailable for a comment until late this evening.

The dead woman has been identified as K T Inanliu, who police said may have been a voter. She was among the six people who died on the spot. The seventh, 51-year-old election official P S Rakesh, affectionately called Kuthoon by his family, was shot in the chest and declared dead at Imphal's RIMS hospital.

"We received news that Kuthoon was injured. Someone called us from the polling booth," Rakesh's elder brother P S Amos, who accompanied Rakesh's inconsolable wife and relatives to Imphal, said.

"Poll duty in Manipur is never safe. We knew that, but we were not prepared for this. No one is ever prepared for something like this," Amos said.

There wasn't much tension in Chakpikarong ahead of elections, in fact. Even this morning, things had been calm, barring a couple of cases in the morning of Naga People's Front workers trying to snatch electronic voting machines (EVMs) from polling booths. Until the shooting happened.

Rakesh was a Group IV employee with DIET, the government's education department. He was a peon who had struggled to save enough to give his only son -- now 25 -- an education, and sent him to work at a call centre in Pune.

The killings in Chandel breached the extremely tight security blanket thrown over Manipur for the elections to its 60 assembly seats. As many as 300 companies of various paramilitary forces had arrived in Imphal from across the country by January 22, and joined Manipur commandos to patrol the streets, carry out random checks, frisk civilians and inspect all vehicles.