Agartala, Nov. 1:Unfazed by the surrender of militants, the banned National Liberation Front of Tripura has embarked on a fresh drive to recruit tribal youths to launch a new offensive in the run-up to the Autonomous District Council elections slated for April next year.

Sources in the Special Branch (intelligence wing) of state police said as the first step towards strengthening the organisation, the outfit had recruited 40 tribal youths and sent them to the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh for training in guerrilla warfare, including use of arms and explosives.

The sources said in the past month, tribal youths, numbering 40 and drawn from poor households in Sadar, Khowai, Gandacherra, Amarpur and Kanchanpur subdivisions had crossed over to the Chittagong Hill Tracts through the hilly and unfenced eastern border of Tripura in six groups.

Utpal Debbarma, a tribal unemployed engineer who had passed out of Tripura Engineering College and joined the NLFT after being persecuted by police in 2001, was now leading the recruitment drive, sources said.

“Our sources from Raisyabari, Damcherra , Kachhima and Karbook areas have reported this and upon verification in particular tribal households, we have come to know that the youths have gone missing since early October,” the source said.

The past few years witnessed a decline in militant offensive in Tripura following a spate of surrenders, waning support among the indigenous tribals, inability to carry out major offensive and collect “tax” through extortion.

These combined factors led to demoralisation among the militants.

On realising that growing marginalisation would cloud its future the NLFT leadership, still in Bangladesh, has started the new recruitment drive.

“Utpal is contacting tribal youths in different parts of the state with a mobile bearing a Bangladeshi Gramin Phone SIM. We are trying to locate the origin of the calls through telecom experts,” the source said.

He said despite deterrent action taken by Dhaka against anti-India militants, they managed to operate clandestinely in Bangladesh with help from security forces.

The CPM, the major constituent of the ruling Left Front, has accused the regional Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) of working as the “overground front” of the banned militants.

Party spokesman Gautam Das said: “The NLFT and the ATTF are aided and abetted by the leaders of the regional parties who hope to use them in elections against the Left Front.”

Das alleged that the INPT leaders’ recent visit to Delhi had been sponsored by the NLFT.

“The INPT leaders are trying to blunt the edge of security forces’ operations by making false allegations so that the NLFT can launch fresh offensive before the ADC polls to rig the elections as they did in the April 2000 polls but they will not succeed,” Das said.