Agartala, May 13: As 56-year-old Pramod Sarkar lay on a bed at the G.B. Hospital here fighting for his life, what grieved him most was that there was no one to perform the last rites of the rest of his family in Simna Colony. All five members of his family had been killed by militants in the early hours of Wednesday.

Tapan Mallik faced the same dilemma, as he too is in hospital, struggling for life. The only other survivor in his family is his nine-month-old niece Swapna.

Altogether 21 people fell prey to All-Tripura Tiger Force bullets on that fateful night and the last rites were supposed to have been performed within three days as all of them had met with “unnatural deaths”.

The surviving members of the other 19 families performed the shradh ceremonies clad in ritual white attire yesterday.

Once these rituals were over, nearly 110 non-tribal families of Simna Colony, Katacherra, Kalitilla and Satcherri took shelter in Simna Colony High School.

When a group of policemen from Sidhai police station tried to persuade the villagers to stay back, day labourer Subinoy Biswas cried out, “Can you give us a guarantee that the killers will not come again?”

He told the mute policemen that despite repeated appeals, the government had not provided them with any security. As he pointed out, now after their departure the entire area would be a happy hunting ground for the Tiger Force rebels, who are based just two km away across the border in a safe haven in Bangladesh.

The villagers told officials of the relief and rehabilitation department, who had arrived to distribute dole to the affected families, that “unlike babus in towns” they had hardly anything to lose as they were already poor.

A similar fate had befallen 15 tribal families of Parshuram village under Sidhai police station in the wake of the Assembly elections.

With less than a fortnight to go before the Assembly polls, a group of NLFT militants had set their houses ablaze on February 16.

Having lost everything, they took shelter on a plot of open ground near the Gajapara TSR camp.

Initially, the jawans and officers of the camp helped them with food and other necessities. But recently the camp was withdrawn, leaving the families in a helpless condition.

A large number of such camps of displaced refugees has sprung up in Khowai, Kanchanpur, Longtarai Valley and Gandacherra subdivisions in the wake of militant attacks and post-poll violence.

According to a recent statement by state tribal welfare minister Jiten Chowdhury, after the declaration of results of the Assembly polls, more than 4,500 tribal families have been driven away from their homes for voting for the CPM.