People's Democracy

TRIPURA

CPI(M) Expresses Concern Over Fifth Columnists

 GIVING vent to its sense of grave concern over the deep tentacles of the fifth column in Tripura, the CPI(M) has laid bare once again the perilous and perfidious path taken by the Congress party for parochial gains in the state.

CPI(M) spokesman and state secretariat member Gautam Das informed about the working of these fifth columnists at a press conference on January 29.

Das was reacting to a Press Trust of India (PTI) report, dated January 29, that the union home ministry has initiated an inquiry into the collusion between a Tripura-based Assam Rifles officer and the outlawed extremist organisation NLFT. The news also referred to the arms and ammunition being siphoned off to the extremists from the Assam Rifles arsenal in the state.

Das pointed out at the press conference that the recent allegation, that has invited an investigation by the union home ministry, is credible enough and confirms what the CPI(M) has already pointed out on a few occasions. In the past, similar serious allegations were labeled against certain officers of the Assam Rifles in Tripura. Brigadier B K Panwar was said to have assisted the IPFT (earlier incarnation of the present INPT) in usurping the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (ADC in short) with the help of NLFT guns, in the May 2000 ADC polls.

There is also an allegation that certain INPT leaders have been frequenting the residences of certain Assam Rifles officers. Even the Congress and INPT men could not but admit to the fact that some of their leaders had gone to Assam Rifles brigade headquarters at Agartala with a suitcase during the run-up to the parliamentary election in February last year. These leaders included state Congress president as well as the INPT supremo and former extremist leader Bijoy Hrangkhawl. It is known and well acknowledged that the Assam Rifles is a disciplined patriotic force that has ceaselessly been fighting, alongside the state police, Tripura State Rifles, BSF, CRPF and the army, against the separatist extremists at the cost of the lives of its numerous jawans. Naturally, therefore, the existence of fifth columnists in the midst of this patriotic force has been causing grave concern not only to the people but also to the security forces themselves, Das maintained.

The CPI(M) has demanded immediate removal of such fifth columnists from their posts, Das added on the occasion.

The CPI(M) leader also reacted to yet another PTI report on the same day. Quoting the union home ministry sources, the report said certain INPT leaders had made clandestine visits to the Bangladesh camps of the NLFT. Das said that this too perfectly chips in with the Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar’s complaint to the union home ministry about certain INPT leaders having secretly visited the NLFT dens in Bangladesh territory several times. Once an INPT leader N C Debbarma had also made such an illegal visit, even though he was then holding the post of Agartala station director of All India Radio.

To substantiate the fact of free movement of NLFT extremists into and out of Bangladesh territory, Gautam Das read out at the press conference from a report in the December 4 issue of Pratham Aalo, a leading Bangladesh daily. The report described in detail the fierce fighting between two NLFT factions in Jhinaia village of Comilla district in Bangladesh on December 1. A number of extremists as well as the wife of owner of the house where extremists of one faction had been putting up, were killed in that infighting. Moreover, afterward, top NLFT leaders, armed to the core, openly visited that spot, all at a time when the army is the custodian of law and order in Bangladesh.

Incidentally, with the state assembly election slated to take place on February 26, the Congress party has struck an alliance with the INPT, the political mask of the NLFT that has sophisticated weapons in its arsenal. Moreover, at the behest of the Congress-INPT combine, the NLFT has unleashed a series of massacre of innocent people in the state. Since the announcement of the poll schedule till the press conference time, extremists had gunned down a total of 23 innocent people, most of whom were CPI(M) activists or supporters.

The Congress party’s alliance with the INPT, whose leaders regularly visit the dens of ISI/Al Qaeda-sponsored outlawed NLFT extremists in Bangladesh territory, is a shocking exposure of the fifth column’s tentacles striking deep roots in the country’s political scenario. One has to clearly realise how this fifth column is ceaselessly gnawing at our democratic set-up from within, Gautam Das concluded. (INN)