Nineteen policemen were killed and five seriously injured in an ambush by unidentified rebels in the remote north-eastern state of Tripura yesterday, where one of India's little-known insurgencies has been raging for decades.
Officials said the Tripura State Rifles convoy was escorting a sick colleague to hospital when militants fired at their vehicle near the state capital Agartala.
The rebels stole at least 19 weapons, including machine-guns and ammunition, before fleeing to a forested mountainous area. State officials said police and paramilitary units have been sent to the scene and a search for the insurgents has been organised No group has claimed responsibility but police believe it may have been carried out by the National Liberation Front of Tripura, one of two main insurgent groups that have been fighting for an independent tribal homeland.
Like the All Tripura Tiger Force, the Liberation Front operates from jungle bases in neighbouring Bangladesh and targets the majority Bengali community which, over the years, has reduced the indigenous tribal population to a minority. Signed agreements with tribal militant groups, agreeing to autonomous district councils for them, have collapsed, heightening frustration and leading to increased militancy. More than 2,000 people, including around 200 insurgents, have been killed in Tripura over the past decade.
More than 20 guerrilla groups, complaining of alienation and neglect by the federal government, are fighting separatist wars in India's seven north-eastern states that are connected tenuously to the mainland by the "chicken's neck" - a slim, 22 km-wide corridor between Bangladesh and Bhutan that is frequently targeted by rebel groups wanting to sever ties with India. More than 11,000 people have been killed in insurgencies in these states since 1992.
Fighting for varying degrees of autonomy, self-determination and independence, the history of this predominantly tribal and underdeveloped region covering 255,037 sq km - 98 per cent of which is bordered by Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China - is an unending saga of broken promises, internecine rivalries and palliatives offered by the federal government.
The recent involvement of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence in training and arming north-eastern insurgents and militant groups from the "Golden Triangle" states of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, who push heroin across India en route to the West to finance weapon purchases, has worsened the situation.
High unemployment and economic exploitation of the region's natural resources like oil, tea, timber silk and jute - the north-eastern states are at least 60 to 70 per cent less developed than the rest of India - has enhanced resentment.