AGARTALA, India, Feb. 6, Tribal guerrillas shot dead five Bengali immigrants in the northeastern Indian state of Tripura hours after a new government assumed power and vowed to fight militants.
Police said on Saturday that 15 armed! Men, suspected to be members of the Tribal National Volunteers (INV), which is demanding the expulsion of Bengali immigrants, struck at a village near Agartala on Friday night and sprayed a family with automatic gunfire.
Three people were killed on the spot and two died in hospital.
In elections on Friday Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) Party wrested power from Marxists who had ruled the state for 10 years,
During the run up to the election both parties accused each other of being in league with guerrillas who killed 105 people during the campaign.
Gandhi declared Tripura a disturbed area and sent in the army to patrol TNV strongholds.
The State’s new Chief Minister, Sudhir Majumdar, again accused the dethroned Marxists of stripping, up trouble and said: “we have definite evidence of that, and the army is investigating’.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 12, 1988
