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Four tribals kidnapped by rebels in Tripura

By The Assam Tribune

Agartala, Dec 19 (IANS): Four more tribal farmers were kidnapped at gunpoint by a banned separatist outfit from a border village in Tripura, police said here on Wednesday.

"Armed NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura) guerrillas abducted the four tribal youths, aged 35 to 45 years old from their houses at Karbook in southern Tripura at gunpoint Tuesday night," a Tripura police spokesman said.

Police suspect that the banned NLFT guerrillas might have taken the hostages to nearby Bangladesh.

Senior police officials along with reinforcements have rushed to the spot, 145 km south of here, and launched a manhunt to nab the guerrillas and to rescue the captives.

Ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said the kidnapped people are its members.

With this, 10 tribal villagers have been kidnapped by the militants in the past one month.

The State government had earlier said it anticipated that the NLFT and All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) were likely to step up their violent activities before the Tripura assembly elections, due in February next year.

Tripura's these two militant secessionist outfits - NLFT and ATTF, outlawed by the Indian authorities - have set up bases in Bangladesh along with the other outfits of the northeast, and receive support from other separatist outfits of the region, officials say. They have been seeking secession of Tripura from India.

Tripura shares an 856-km border with Bangladesh, some of it unfenced and running through dense forests, making it porous and vulnerable.

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