People's Democracy

TRIPURA

 Extremists Intensify Their Depredations

 ON October 2 night, 2 innocent people were killed and 9 others kidnapped in 2 separate incidents of dacoity at the outskirts of Dharmanagar subdivisional town in North Tripura and Khowai subdivisional Town in West Tripura district. By all indications, these were part of the far-reaching conspiracy to supplement the violent extremist atrocities in the hilly tribal belts of Tripura with exactly the same type of violent atrocities in the non-tribal belts of the plains. Making use of the proximity of international border with Bangladesh, such conspiracies are being pursued with an eye on the coming assembly elections in the state.

In Khowai, however, the counter attack by a village resistance group left two of the dacoits dead.

Both the incidents of dacoity were the handiwork of dacoits from across Bangladesh. Of these, the Dharmanagar dacoity was carried out in collusion with some local miscreants.

A gang of 15 armed miscreants raided two houses simultaneously at Netajipara in Dharmanagar between 11.15 p m and 1.30 a m. One of the houses belonged to a local school teacher Subrata Nath who had not yet returned home from outside. The dacoits forced his mother to hand her ornaments over to them and, immediately thereafter, rummaged the other articles in the room. However, as soon as the house owner reached his gate on his motorbike, the sound prompted the dacoits to move away at once from the bike’s sharp headlight. Then they kidnapped him from the house gate at gunpoint.

It was at that moment that Dilip Das, a small shopkeeper, was returning home from the market. Das probably did not recognise that the man standing on the road within the zone of the headlight was a dacoit, and was killed on the spot by three gunshots in quick succession.

Meanwhile the gang had kidnapped another person from the other house they had raided, in addition to 7 other innocent, mostly poor homebound people from the road, bringing the total of those kidnapped to 9. An eyewitness reported that some miscreants in the gang kept themselves under cover all along. According to the police, the footprints along the adjacent paddy field indicate that the miscreants crossed over to Bang1adesh through the Raghna border.

Expressing concern over the Dharmanagar and Khowai incidents, chief minister Manik Sarkar urged upon the people to keep their cool despite the renewed threat. Also, immediately after the incidents, the chief minister’s intervention led the BSF to hold a meeting with the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) on October 3 afternoon to rescue the kidnapped. The BDR promised to enquire into the incident.

But, ominously enough, though in vain, local Congress leaders tried to trigger tension in the area by squatting with about 20 followers, shouting incendiary slogans. Then, after midday, they placed logs of trees on the road to block it when the police were activated. The Congress also called for a provocative Dharmanagar bandh without, however, a word of protest against the incident or demand for punishment to the culprits.

Vehemently condemning the violent incident, a statement by the CPI(M) state secretariat accused the anti-Left Front political forces of having engineered it in a pre-planned conspiracy to trigger tension and turbulence during the run-up to the assembly elections. The party urged the state government to thoroughly enquire into the incident to unmask the conspirators. It also demanded that the centre bring pressure on the Bangladesh government for immediate release of the kidnapped.

On October 3, at about 2.00 a m, a gang of 25 dacoits from across Bangladesh raided Baijalbari on the outskirts of Khowai. Then on a vigil, the Village Resistance Group put up stiff resistance with bows and arrows and killed a dacoit on the spot. While on the run, another dacoit hid himself in a school building but was soon searched out and beaten to death. However, while being chased away, the dacoits killed one Shambhubrata Chakraborty of Hatkata area in Samatal Padmabill village panchayat and injured his mother.

Subsequently, on October 9 morning, extremists of the outlawed NLFT ambushed a territorial army vehicle at Taichakma, a remote corner of Raishyabari under Gandachhara subdivision of Dhalai district, killing on the spot 9 people and injuring 3 others. Those killed included 8 jawans and one driver. The extremists also looted all the 8 automatic weapons of the jawans. This attack reminds one of the biggest ever extremist ambush on paramilitary jawans in Tripura, carried out by NLFT extremists on August 20, in which 20 jawans of the Tripura State Rifles lost their lives at Hirapur in Bishalgarh subdivision of West Tripura district.

At about 8.30 a m on October 9, while escorting 3 vehicles, a territorial army vehicle was ambushed by NLFT gunmen at Srikantapara between Boalkhali and Taichakma, one of the toughest terrains of Tripura. These vehicles were carrying workers to the construction site of a border road on the Indo-Bangladesh border near Raishyabari under the supervision of the General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF). According to the police, the extremists hurled a grenade on the vehicle carrying the jawans and then rained bullets from sophisticated firearms. The extremists then looted all the automatic weapons of the jawans lying in a pool of blood. The injured were later on hospitalised in Agartala.

In another incident on October 9 itself, extremists kidnapped 3 workers associated with the work of railway construction in Tripura. 

In separate statements, the state Left Front committee and chief minister Manik Sarkar vehemently condemned the dastardly ambush on patriotic security forces as part of a series of pre-planned attack on the personnel working for the development of this backward landlocked state. It will be noted that workers and employees of the railways, ONGC and the telecom department have also been subjected to violent attacks time and again.

The chief minister has instructed the security forces to go all-out to nab the culprits.

The Left Front statement said the ambush is yet another vindication of the vigorous demand repeatedly put forward by the state government and the state’s population for expediting the work of border road construction, barbed wire fencing of 856 km long border of Tripura with Bangladesh, restoration of the 3 army battalions withdrawn from the state, and reinforcement of the BSF, among other demands, for effectively combating the extremists. The Left Front reiterated that the centre must pay heed to all these demands without any further delay.

The Left Front also demanded that leaders of the Congress-INPT combine must answer for the people’s accusations against their heinous opportunist alliance. The front said the combine would have to give an account for all the killings, kidnappings and other atrocities perpetrated by the extremists in Tripura, including the barbaric killing of patriotic jawans.

Meanwhile, local people of Raishyabari have alleged that two INPT leaders --- legislator Rabindra Debbarma and Tripura Autonomous District Council chairman Hirendra Tripura --- had a secret, prolonged parley with a group of 25-30 extremists at Haricharan Jamatiapara of Raishyabari in mid-September. It is said that they left their security guards in a marketplace before going to the venue of their parley to plot such attacks.

In another significant development, a recent two-day seminar on border management, organised by the BSF at Shillong, asked the centre to expedite the reinforcement of the BSF and the fencing job on the Indo-Bangladesh border. The seminar also urged upon the Bangladesh government to bust the extremist sanctuaries in its territory. Noted experts on the affairs of this region including the present and former BSF functionaries, as well as the governor of Assam, participated in this seminar. The two-day event voiced grave concern over the stepping up of ISI activities in the region following the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraff’s Bangladesh visit in July, and over the centre’s half-hearted approach towards resolving the burning issue of extremist menace in the north-east including Tripura.

Incidentally, the Congress party has entered into a political-electoral alliance with the INPT, the extremist NLFT’s political wing, with the aim of rigging the upcoming Tripura state assembly polls at extremist gunpoint. They most probably want to falsify the elections in the 1988 style. It will be recalled that on the eve of the 1988 assembly elections, the extremist TNV had entered a secret deal with the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and killed about 100 innocent non-tribal innocent people. This gave the centre an alibi for unilateral declaration of the whole state as disturbed area and eventual falsification of the elections. It was thus that the Congress-TUJS combine stole its way into power, from where it was ousted by the people in February 1993. (INN)