Agartala, Feb. 7: The Shyamali bus service of Dhaka, which used to carry passengers from Agartala to Calcutta via Dhaka, suspended its service indefinitely yesterday.

Its officer-in-charge in Agartala, Keshav Ghosh, yesterday put up a notification announcing the indefinite suspension of service.

'We cannot take any more risks as within Bangladesh there are undesirable political elements who hurl petrol bombs on running buses. More than 40 people have already died,' said Ghosh.

The bus service between Agartala and Dhaka commenced on September 2003 and from a daily service, it was gradually scaled down to thrice, twice and finally once a week (every Sunday).

The Tripura Road Transport Corporation (TRTC) of the state government had begun plying a bus, Maitri, between Agartala and Dhaka but that service had to be suspended as well.

'The two bus services had greatly benefited the people of land-locked Tripura but now we are in big trouble as both have been suspended. The Maitri bus service between Agartala and Dhaka had never really been very profitable and we had to finally suspend it from October last year,' said D.K. Chakraborty, the deputy director of the corporation.

However, border trade between Tripura and Bangladesh is still on, though the number of trucks has gone down.

K.N. Chakaborty, a deputy commissioner in the state's transport department, said the suspension of TRTC's bus service between Agartala and Guwahati has also created a major problem.

'The service had to be suspended last year because of mounting losses but at that stage nobody knew that the railway service would also be halted because of the ongoing gauge conversion work,' said Chakraborty. 'Unless the gauge conversion work is completed early enough, Tripura will face a serious problem.' The connectivity problem has worsened after private air services scaled down the number of flights and the consequent high prices of air tickets.

Jet Airways suspended its evening flight between Agartala and Calcutta in October last year while SpiceJet suspended services in December, sending the price of air tickets spiralling.

'When there were an adequate number of flights, the prices for tickets between Agartala-Calcutta and Guwahati used to be as low as Rs 1,800 and Rs 3,000 but when prices started rising, they went up to Rs 18,000 between Agartala and Calcutta. Now prices have come down because of an increase in Air India flights and reintroduction of SpiceJet service, but they are still very high. Every month, more than a thousand people go to Calcutta for treatment and they are the worst sufferers because of the present situation,' said Chakraborty.