Even as demands and demonstrations mount at several places countrywide to press for central assistance towards security in Tripura and to protest against the prolonged and politically motivated apathy of the centre in this regard, NLFT extremists strike a flow on the peace-loving people of Tripura once again, gunning down four including a child and injuring one in the wee hours on March 14 at Laxmipur village under Pecharthal Bloc, North Tripura, 33 huts of 15 families were also torched by the extremists on the spot.

In separate statements the CPI(M) and the chief minister Manik Sarkar vehemently condemned the dastardly and devilish extremist attack on innocent people, men and women, child and old. The CPI(M) views this incident as part of the heinous conspiracy to destabilise the state ahead of the upcoming elections to the Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), a deep-laid conspiracy contributed to by the absence of requisite central assistance fuelling and furthering extremist barbarity in the state aimed at derailing the ADC poll process. The party exhorts the centre once again to dispatch adequate central security forces as per state government requisition. Chief minister Manik Sarkar says that such heinous attack testify to the extremists’ absolute disrespect for human rights in their barbaric bid to spark ethnic split and spite and stall developmental programmes. The ever alert and aware people of the state will foil this extremist bid, the chief minister emphasised.