People's Democracy

TRIPURA 

Desperate Attempts To Spark Turmoil 

WITH Tripura assembly elections two years away from now, and their repeated drubbing in various elections in the state, the anti-Left Front forces are now adopting tactics aimed at triggering terror and turmoil, particularly in the mixed population areas of the state. These forces, sponsored by internal and international anti-national reactionary vested interests, are using separatist militants and miscreants with the hope this will help in materializing their day-dream of capturing power in the 2008 assembly elections. However they are being blind to the reality –– they are today increasingly cornered and crestfallen by their straight six time rout in the state’s various elections over the last decade.   

In the backdrop of the ongoing erosion of their political foothold in Tripura due to an upsurge of democratic demand for development of the state, coupled with the surrender of disillusioned extremists fleeing or flushed out from their camps in Bangladesh territory and the capturing or killing of the hardcore ones in encounters with security forces, the anti-Left Front opposition is now desperate enough to trigger terror and turmoil in the state. 

Early in the night of May 30, 2006, four armed miscreants belonging to a facist organisation called United Bengali Liberation Force (UBLF) carried out a pre-planned dastardly and diabolic attack on two non-tribal DYFI activists. While returning home at about 8.00 pm after closing their shop at Mohanpur under Sadar Sub-Division, West Tripura the DYFI activists were waylaid by the armed assassins from behind a bamboo grove at a lonely place and dragged on two motor bikes to a forest area solely inhabited by some tribals, ostensibly to give the attack an ethnic overtone and spark ethnic strife. There, the two victims’ throats were slit and they were also hacked on the head and other limbs with sharp weapons.   

Meanwhile, a local eye-witness of the attack had informed the police and by the time the police arrived on the spot along with the local people drawn by the shrieks of the victims, the miscreants had made good their escape. Following hospitalisation in the Agartala government medical college in precarious condition, one of them succumbed to his injuries while the other has still been battling for life with, however, a slight improvement showing up recently. 
  
According to local people, the deceased DYFI activists’ elder cousin, CPI(M) local committee member Rakesh Acharjee had possibly been another target just an hour earlier. Acting on a tip-off, the police arrested all the four miscreants involved in the attack. One of them was the ring leader behind a bomb blast in the busy Lake Chowmohani market, Agartala a few years ago killing a tribal vegetable grower and grievously injuring some others while the other three are branded dacoits facing serious charges, including of murder.   

The heinous attack sparked intense hatred and resentment among all sections of the peace-loving and democratic minded populace of the entire sub-division. The DYFI and the CPI(M) Sadar divisional committee vehemently condemned the attack and expressed deep sympathy with the victims and their families. 
  
The CPI(M) state secretary Baidyanath Majumder visited and inquired about the treatment of the injured in hospital, while a team of the Party and DYFI and its affiliate Tribal Youth Federation (TYF) leaders including Party state secretariat member Gautam Das visited the affected two families next day at Mohanpur and earnestly assured them of all assistance. A massive protest march was organised on Saturday by the DYFI in Agartala to condemn the dastardly attack on the two youth activists with the political conspiracy of sparking off ethnic strife. 
  
The timing of the attack is also significant. Presently under the aegis of the DYFI and TYF, youth pada yatras and cycle rallies are being conducted all over the state to press for a 16-point charter of demands including announcement of special employment packages for young men and women of the North East, extension of railway line upto Agartala by year 2007 as promised, industrialisation and employment generation in the state, and so on so forth. Above one lakh youth activists are slated to participate in the month-long programme evoking massive response statewide. Alarmed by the growing strength of the CPI(M) and the DYFI-TYF in the once Congress-dominated mixed population Mohanpur area, the reactionary forces significantly timed the UBLF attack on two youth activists of the area on the eve of the May 31 central cycle rally in Agartala organised by the DYFI. It may also be recalled here that the erstwhile Bengali chauvinist organisation called Amara Bangali coalesced with Congress conspirators in the futile bid to topple the first Left Front government in Tripura by flaming the ethnic flare up of June 1980, just half way into the initial stage of the pro-people activities of that massively mandated government. The then tribal chauvinist organisation TUJS and its underground wing TNV were cogs in this conspiracy machine. 
  
The same conspiracy machine has been activated once again following the latest severe electoral setback for the anti-CPI(M) political forces in the February 27 and March 3 polls of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council’s village committees. Over and above, through the May 30 fascist type UBLF attack on two youth activists, such pro-imperialist and fissiparous forces are also trying to bolster trans-border terrorism in Tripura. Over the last one month, outlawed extremists have carried out dastardly ambushes on health care and security personnel in remote inaccessible areas and killed three security personnel as well as injured seven others. The extremists have also been stalling construction of an alternative national highway running through such remote areas of the state. On the other hand, in the same one month’s span, a total of 36 extremists including an associate have returned to the mainstream by laying down their arms, and three hardcore extremists have been killed in the ceaseless counter-insurgency operations going on with exemplary cooperation of the people. The police and para-military arrested seven extremists and their 19 accomplices as well as seized a sizeable quantity of arms and ammunition from them. Besides, internecine clashes have killed two other extremists and Bangladesh authorities have extradited nine outlawed extremists to Tripura after their arrest in Bangladesh territory. All these setbacks are making these forces desperate for sparking turmoil in the state. The politically conscious people of the state will surely rebuff such attempts. (INN)