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NLFT kills four RSS activists

The banned National Liberation Front of Tripura has killed four Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharaks it had held captive since August 1999.

Disclosing this in a fax message to an Agartala-based daily on Saturday, former NLFT commander Nayanbasi Jamatya said the four RSS workers were executed in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh following an order by the outfit's three top leaders.

The regional headquarters of the RSS in Guwahati however did not have any information in this regard. Sources at Keshavdham, the north-east headquarters of RSS, said they do not have any word so far. They however agreed that the chances of the four pracharaks coming out alive are very slim.

In his fax message, the former NLFT commander did not specify the exact time and place of the killings. Nayanbasi fled from the outfit's Chittagong camp along with 30 others early this month. His wife and two children are still being held hostage by the NLFT.

The Tripura police said though they have enough evidence of the killings, they could not say anything officially till the bodies were recovered.

The RSS pracharaks - Shyamal Sengupta, Dinen De, Sudhamay Datta and Subhankar Chakraborty - had been abducted by armed NLFT militants on August 16, 1999 from Kanchanpara under Fatikroy police station of North Tripura district.

Sources said the four men had gone to Kanchanpara to visit the Ratanmani Shishu Shiksha Mandir run by the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram.

Initially they were kept in the outfit's Longtarai hideout, but later shifted to the base camp in the CHT following intensive combing operations by a special BSF commando unit.

Sources said the NLFT had demanded Rs 10 million as ransom. But the RSS high command refused to pay saying, "Once we pay we'll not be able to work here." After the refusal, local RSS leaders feared that the pracharaks may have been killed after the outfit stopped communicating in November last year. "For more than a year we used to get information about them but now this has stopped," a RSS leader added.

Nayanbasi and his 30 followers might surrender to the state police or the Assam Rifles soon.

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