People's Democracy

TRIPURA 

ATTF Extremists Gun Innocents 

IN yet another incident of armed intervention in the state’s democratic process on the part of the internal and international vested interests, the imperialist-sponsored and outlawed ATTF extremists gunned down on March 20, afternoon five poor and innocent non tribal labourers. Further they grievously wounded two others storming into a brick field of Champaknagar, a tribal belt of West Tripura, 21 km from state capital Agartala. 

This is the third extremist carnage in Tripura since announcement of the parliamentary polls. The earlier ones were the outlawed and overrun NLFT extremists’ revenge raping of six tribal women and roughing up of 15 tribal men, killing one of them on the spot in consequence on March 9, at Longthorai valley Sub-Division, Dhalai District and the suspected ATTF extremists killing of to infants and two women two days later at Kamalpur Sub-Division of the District.

At about 3.00 p m March 20, when labourers had just resumed their days work following their midday meal, the ATTF extremists raided the brick field from all sides and opened fire from their AK-47 rifles, killing on the spot two labourers and grievously injuring four others, out of whom one expired later on way to hospital and another following hospitalisation. On their way back the extremist spotted another labourer cowering behind a bush and blew out his brain with bullets from point blank range killing him instantly. Two labourers in critical condition are now under treatment in GB Hospital, Agartala. Significantly enough following the extremists’ disappearance from the spot a few miscreants raided and ransacked the houses of a few tribal families adjoining the brickfield.

Immediately after getting information CPI(M) leaders including state secretariat member and power minister Manik Dey and State Committee member Radhacharan Debbarma rushed to the spot and provided necessary assistance to the affected people. Protest marches were taken out by the party in the evening at several places of the area. A dawn-to-dusk bandh is being observed today throughout Champaknagar at the call of the party, keeping out of its purview the state’s lifeline Assam-Agartala national highway running through the area.

In separate statements the CPI(M) state secretariat and chief minister  Manik Sarkar have vehemently condemned the extremists’ dastardly and barbaric attack on poor innocent labourers. This is an exact replication of the several earlier instances of heinous pre-poll plots of this left-ruled state’s anti-Left Front to jeopardise the atmosphere of free and fair elections by triggering terror and ethnic tension, the party says. But all such clandestine conspiracies prior to polls during the tenures of the state’s Left Front government have miserably failed to defeat and dishearten the peace-loving and politically seasoned people of Tripura and only exacerbated the militants’ and their mentors’ isolation and the erosion of their support base, the party points out. However, the party urges the Election Commissioner to build up adequate security system against such armed interventions in the state’s democratic process.

According to the chief minister, such extremist attacks are driven by the despair and desperation due to the ongoing series of successful counter-insurgency operation powered by the people, the police and the para-military excellently cooperating with one another.

Incidentally, the state’s Opposition Congress-INPT combine has been in a shamble since the NLFT’s over ground political wing INPT’s vertical split and ouster from power at the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (ADC) by the breakaway party NSPT with outside support from the CPI(M) and the INPT’s subsequent allying with the BJP and the Trinamul Congress  party. Meanwhile, the ATTF coming to the forefront of extremist atrocity in Tripura points to newer conspiracies of political vested interests to destabilise the state’s Left Front Government. (INN)