TRIPURA

Extremists Kidnap ADC Executive Member

WITH Tripura slated to go to panchayat polls in mid-July, involving the most vital issues of day to day life and livelihood of the rural areas in the state, kidnapping has come to be the mainstay of the politically patronised outlawed extremists of Tripura in their desperate and abortive bid to destabilise the invigorating atmosphere of peace and progress prevailing in the state. It will be noted that about 83 per cent of the state’s population live in the rural and tribal areas under the panchayats and the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (ADC).

The dismay and desperation of the militants and their mentors has obviously been aggravated by the fact that above 30 per cent of the village panchayats in the state have been won uncontested by the Left Front. This became clear as soon as the deadline for withdrawal of nominations expired on July 1.

At about 11 p m on June 30, a group of seven NLFT extremists, armed with sophisticated weapons, raided the house of Rabijoy Jamatia at Haticherra village under Udaipur subdivision in South Tripura district. Jamatia is the executive member of the NSPT led ADC.

Snatching at once the 9 m service revolver with 10 rounds of cartridge from Jamatia’s official bodyguard, the extremists tied both the hands of Rabijoy Jamatia and made off with him. Immediately after receiving information, top police officers of the district including the DIG (Range) rushed to the spot with reinforcement and a dog squad. The police and the CRPF launched a massive manhunt to trace down the culprits.

According to the state police headquarters, Rabijoy Jamatia  had on that day arrived in his Haticherra house from Agartala alongwith his wife and son-in-law without any security escort and without information to the local police station. In this matter, he went against the advice of his only bodyguard who accompanied him. Incidentally, he is entitled to two bodyguards.

One will note that the NSPT was formed by a breakaway group from the INPT that had been ruling the ADC since it hijacked the ADC polls with the help of the NLFT’s guns in May 2000. The INPT is the overground political wing of the outlawed extremist organisation NLFT. Later, however, the INPT suffered a vertical split, leading to the formation of the NSPT that ousted the INPT from the ADC, with the outside support from the opposition CPI(M).

It was the same Rabijoy Jamatia from whose house in Haticherra house the extremists had looted the service revolver of his two official bodyguards in the year 2000.

In separate statements, chief minister Manik Sarkar, the CPI(M) state secretariat, the NSPT, and Radhacharan Debbarma (leader of the CPI(M) group in the ADC) vehemently condemned the kidnapping of Rabijoy Jamatia. Manik Sarkar points out that over the last two months and a half the NLFT has kidnapped an innocent girl from Dhalai, 24 poor traders from North Tripura and now an ADC executive member from South Tripura. With their diabolic plans to hijack the last year’s assembly elections as also this years parliamentary polls in Tripura fully frustrated, this crestfallen outlawed outfit is now desperately trying, though in vain, to trigger ethnic tension in Tripura by carrying out dastardly kidnappings, the chief minister’s statement said. He also instructed the director general of the state police to go all out to nab the culprits.

According to the NSPT as also the ADC’s CPI(M) leader Radhacharan Debbarma, the kidnapping of Rabijoy Jamatia  was designed to destabilise the ongoing process of peace and progress in the ADC areas, as the ADC is a vital means of rural reconstruction in the state.

Meanwhile, a CRPF rifleman was killed on July 1 in two separate encounters with the extremists of the ATTF, the other outlawed outfit in the state. A battle of guns ensued when, acting on tip-offs, two contingents of the police and CRPF launched two joint counter insurgency operations, one at Kalyanpur and the other at Jirania in West Tripura district. Although the extremists made good their escape while a CRPF rifleman later succumbed to his injury in G B Hospital, Agartala, the trace of blood at one of the encounter sites indicated that an extremist must have got injured.