By IANS
Agartala : Separatist militants kidnapped four Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists, including a party-polling agent, on the eve of the assembly poll in Tripura, police officials said here Friday.
A police spokesman said heavily armed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) militants late Thursday abducted the four CPI-M cadres from Chawmanu village in Dhalai district, 135 km north of the state capital here.
“An operation has been launched to rescue the kidnapped people,” the police official said.
In a separate incident, NLFT guerrillas assaulted more than 50 CPI-M supporters at Kalaynpur in west Tripura Thursday.
Police said 30 people were admitted to hospital after the attack.
“NLFT militants in association with the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), a tribal-based party, assaulted the CPI-M workers to terrorise them before the polls,” said Gautam Das, CPI-M spokesman.
The tribal guerrillas have also taken away electors’ photo identity cards (EPIC) from a large number of people in different parts of the state.
“We shall arrange alternative measures to allow those voters, whose EPIC have been snatched by the separatists,” said G.S.G. Ayyangar, chief electoral officer of Tripura.
Meanwhile, paramilitary forces have been deployed in all the 17 sub-divisions of the state in view of Saturday’s poll.