TRIPURA

 Extremists Kill Surrendered Militant’s Family

DRIVEN to despair by its growing isolation from the people, outlawed NLFT extremists have made the innocent family of a former extremist the gruesome victims of their vengeful violence. This heinous crime came at a time when the NLFT’s over ground political wing, the INPT that is the Congress party’s ally, has once again got into its earlier groove of demanding a separate state. Incidentally, the demand was kept in suspended animation in a vain bid to beguile the state’s electorate in favour of the Congress-INPT combine during the assembly elections last February.

One will note that the intensifying mass awareness and resistance against insurgency as well as the growing erosion among the ranks of militants and their mentors has engendered a ceaseless series of surrender by the outlawed extremists who want to return to the mainstream of democracy and development. One such former NLFT extremist was Padmacharan Malsum who surrendered to the Assam Rifles on June 16 and had been staying in its camp since then. On October 30, seized with an irresistible hunger for home life, he headed for his house in the remote Lailak village of Killa area under Udaipur subdivision, South Tripura. But he was kidnapped by a group of NLFT extremists who were lying in ambush on his way. However, the victim somehow made good his escape and arrived in the Assam Rifles camp in the early hours on November 1.

Shortly afterwards, desperate over Malsum’s escape, a group of extremists raided his house and, failing to find him there, picked up his father-in-law, wife and four sons including a sucking one. The extremists then lined up all the six in a far off jungle and, barring Malsum’s father-in-law, shot dead everyone else including the 7 months old sucking baby. A witness to the brutal sight, the father-in-law rushed back home and informed others. Due to extreme remoteness of the village, however, the police could not discover the five bullet-ridden dead bodies before the sunrise on November 2. The top officers of the subdivision police and administration reached the spot the same morning and launched a manhunt for the extremist gunmen.

With intense rage against this dastardly and barbaric extremist slaughter, tribal and non-tribal people rocked the entire subdivision with numerous roaring marches and meetings the same evening. An all-out Killa bandh was also observed on November 3 at the call of the CPI(M). Chief minister Manik Sarkar and the CPI(M) state secretariat have vehemently condemned these killings as a vain bid to derail the ongoing process of the disillusioned extremists breaking ranks and returning to the mainstream. The CPI(M) said this brutal wiping out of almost an entire innocent family of a former militant who had quit the futile path of fratricide has intensified the hatred of the state’s peace loving people towards insurgency and will go a long way in further isolating the vested interests who are sponsoring militancy.

In another incident on November 2 evening, a group of NLFT extremists raided the house of a former ATTF extremist at Kalachhari village near Ambasa, the headquarters town of Dhalai district, and fired at him. He was removed to G B Hospital, Agartala, in a precarious condition, with a bullet stuck in his chest. The police are in search of the extremists.

Meanwhile, on the same afternoon, one more NLFT extremist and one of his associates returned to the mainstream, laying down his arms to the SDPO of Longthorai Valley subdivision in Dhalai district.

Incidentally, the tremendous despair now reigning supreme in the camp of the militants and their mentors in Tripura is due to the politically seasoned people of Tripura who foiled the Congress-INPT conspiracy to hijack the February assembly elections with the help of NLFT guns. This desperation got further accentuated after the corrupt INPT lost the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (ADC), a vital constitutional body which it had usurped with the help of NLFT guns in the May 2000 elections. The INPT leaders were recently seen camping in Delhi to press for an autonomous state comprising the ADC areas in Tripura. Their ally, the Congress party, is significantly keeping mum over this preposterous and anti-national demand as also over the mindless massacres being perpetrated by the underground NLFT. (INN)