GUWAHATI: Three insurgents of National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), suspected to have threatened a BJP MP in Tripura for voting in favour of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB), which is now “Citizenship (Amendment) Act” (CAA), have been arrested.
The rebels, Kanti Marak, Samparai Debbarma and Fanijoy Reang, were nabbed while they were travelling by the Silchar-Agartala passenger train on Wednesday. They were zeroed in on at Panisagar railway station but one had managed to give the slip. He was apprehended later from Dharmanagar railway station.
The police said the arrest of the trio, who were allegedly involved in insurgent activities, was made based on intelligence inputs. The police suspected that they were the ones who had threatened the MP, Rebati Tripura, a tribal.
During the height of protests against CAA in the Northeast last month, the NLFT had written a letter to the Tripura East MP asking him on why he voted in favour of the CAB. The rebel group had also threatened to call for his social boycott. It had accused him of betraying the state’s tribals through his action.
However, the MP had defended his action saying voting in favour of the CAB was not his individual decision but that of his party. Also, there was a whip which the party had issued, he had said.
Tribal groups and organisations in Tripura have been critical of the BJP, which heads the state’s two-party coalition government, on the issue of the CAA. Pradyot Kishore Debbarma, a tribal who belongs to the royal family, has already moved the Supreme Court challenging the amended citizenship law.
“When people suffered during the Bengal famine, it was we, the tribals of Tripura, who had sheltered them. We sheltered them every time they faced a problem. And today, we have been reduced to a minority. We are one/third of the state’s population,” he said recently.