AGARTALA, Dec 17? Following the fall of the central headquarters of the banned insurgents outfit All Tripura Tiger Force at Satcherri in Bangladesh, tribal guerrillas belonging to this faction are now on the run. Intelligence services confirmed that a large detachment of about 43 Tiger militants who escaped the rival NLFT attack last week at Satcherri entered Indian territory in West Tripura district on Friday.
The NLFT militants had pulled off an all-out attack on the well-fortified CHQ of the ATTF on last December 6 midnight and shot dead eight Tigers. One NLFT militant was also killed in the fierce firefight. Several others were injured in the encounter of whom two were identified by Bangladesh newspapers as Jogesh Debbarma and Rabi Charan Debbarma. Jogesh Debbarma is known to be an ATTF key-man who had earlier been arrested by Bangladesh security forces for his involvement in the Bogra ammunition haul. Jogesh and at least three others injured in the gunfight were Bangladeshi citizens. They are presently being treated at Bahubal hospital near Satcherri in Chunarughat (Habiganj district) Bangladesh.
Fierce infight between the Indian insurgents in Bangladesh hideouts is nothing new. Similar incidents happened in the past several times. In January last, a similar fight at Comilla in Bangladesh between two factions of NLFT Nayanbashi and NLFT Biswamohan killed four militants and one housewife Neptune Nahar Filtry.
More recently, on November 21, as many as 27 armed cadres of the NLFT Biswamohan faction ran amok in their Lalukalu CHQ in Sajek Hill range in Bangladesh and shot dead their leaders. The lower-rung armed rebels were angry at their leader?s weakness towards women and open indulgence in sexual abuses of the tribal girls they had brought on the pretext of forming armed ?women wing? of the NLFT. Eight NLFT leaders and two of their mistresses were killed in the attack. These armed rebels who revolted against their leaders had also fled from their Lalukalu camp after the incident and entered into South Tripura. They were last reported to be roaming in the deep-forested land as loose canon.
So far the BDR used to provide shelter to the Indian outfits in exchange of huge amount of bribes. But the NLFT attack on ATTF central headquarters where the militants blazed their automatics at each other on December 6 throwing around as many as nine corpses, and held the entire Satcherri village and its adjoining localities in panic for the entire night, the BDR found the heat was too much to bear.
In the wake of the Satcherri attack, the Bangladesh border rangers played safe. They asked the ATTF militants to leave the place immediately. Two options, the Indian intelligence services said, were given to them. First either shift the camp farther inside Bangladesh ? out of NLFT?s reach or return to Indian territory.
It is learnt that the deputy of ATTF president Ranjit Debbarma and in-charge of the Satcherri CHQ Chitta Debbarma shifted the camp, but instead of staying there moved out to Simna, a border village under Sidhai police station in West Tripura district on Friday last with a 43-strong detachment of the extremists.
?The group is heavily armed and was last seen talking to the villagers in Bairagipara near Simna. It is likely that they would split in small groups and spread over their stronghold areas in Sidhai, Khowai and Kalyanpur police stations areas,? said an officer. The security forces are also well aware of the militant movement and sources said, BSF, Assam Rifles and Tripura State Rifles were alerted. A massive search operation was launched to hunt down the militants.