It has been like this since 1992. But if this has kept Tripura's economic lifeline moving, death and anarchy reign supreme elsewhere in the State. The insurgent outfits can strike even on the National Highway. Only last Sunday, one of the two such groups, the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) issued a diktat to travel agencies running night buses totake "clearance certificates" from it.

Most agencies will obey the diktat and pay up for the passes. For they know the Army, paramilitary forces and the State police cannot protect them from militants' attacks at all times and at all places. In fact, a large section of the people are paying up the militants to stay alive.

Worse still, many pay them and still die at their hands. People are kidnapped, asked to pay the ransom and will be lucky to be released from captivity. Health Minister and charismatic CPI(M) leader, Bimal Sinha, and his brother Bidyut paid with their lives on Tuesday while negotiating ransom for another. But the militants kept demanding and taking money long after the abducted brother had been killed. Sinha kept paying, hoping against hope.

In 1996, the wife of Jugabrata Chakrabarty, owner of the Megliban tea garden, suffered trauma even after her husband's death in the insurgents' captivity. For legal reasons she needed proof of her husband's death. The captors agreed to send her his"skeleton" but asked for another Rs 100,000 for it! The hapless woman could not take it and was devastated.

Kidnapping, killings and ransom have long become unhappy Tripura's only tale. According to official estimates, nearly 1,000 people were kidnapped and about 450 killed, other than policemen and security forces, between 1995 and December 1997. In the Tripura West district alone, 322 people were abducted during the period and of them 266 killed. The State capital, Agartala, is situated in this district. (The State has three other districts -- Tripura North, Tripura South and the newly-created Dhalai.) Only 30 militants died in the encounters with the police and security forces in this district during the period.

Killings and kidnapping apart, the militants hold development work and even normal life to ransom. Numerous contractors and their workers have been abducted and some killed, with the result that roads and bridges lie in disrepair and other schemes are abandoned. In scores of schools,particularly in Dhalai district, neither teachers nor students dare come to attend classes. In marketplaces in the interior areas, shop-owners are soft targets for the militants. In almost all cases, they are Bengalis who also retaliate but, powerless against the underground guerrillas, they take on innocent, defenceless tribals.

Which is exactly the gameplan of the militants who thrive on a hate campaign against non-tribals. "That is also the strategy of the militants' foreign masters like the ISI of Pakistan," says K.D.T. Singh, additional director general of police. The hope that the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh will force the militants, active in Tripura and other north-eastern States, to leave their camps in that country has been belied. "All the groups are there. They only shifted their earlier camps," adds Brigadier B.S. Choudhary of the Assam Rifles. "Besides, the democratically elected governments in Bangladesh do not have much control over the Army, the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and theDGFI (Directorate General of Foreign Intelligence and add to this the deep penetration of the ISI Bangladesh," argues another senior State official.

The insurgents are also aided by some foreign-funded Christian missions, which have long been accused of such activity in other north-eastern States. The erstwhile underground outfit, Tribal National Volunteers (TNV) and the present-day NLFT openly declared their goal of establishing an "independent Christian country" in Tripura. The State police has a cell to monitor the "terrorist and missionary activities". Both militants and missionaries aiding them have one goal -- regain the "country" for the tribals, while converting them to Christianity.

They know it is an unattainable goal because Bengalis, who came to Tripura from East Pakistan and then Bangladesh, now constitute 70 per cent of the population. But then insurgencies drag on, and no matter how distant, the goal remains, more so with help from foreign mercenaries.

The never-ending battle

TheState Government, political parties and even the Army say that only a political dialogue with the insurgents will provide a lasting solution to the problem. But one group has surrendered only to create another that continues to defy. Here is the fact-sheet of battles, surrenders and fresh battles.