Northeast terror outfits shifting camp to Myanmar, claims Tripura police chief

Agartala, Sep 4 (ANI): Tripura Director General of Police (DGP) Pranay Sahay has said the terrorist outfits of the northeast are under extreme pressure and are in the process of shifting their base camps to Myanmar following a crackdown by the Bangladesh army.

"Underground groups operating from Bangladesh are under extreme pressure. Many of the groups are in the process of shifting to Myanmar. In fact ULFA are in the process of shifting to Myanmar because of the pressure from Bangladesh.

"The improvement in the northeast is due to the function of political dispensation in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh army has crackdown on many militant camps," he added.

The police chief said the rate of militancy related incidents in the northeastern states of India has gone down from 1561 in 2008 and 1297 in 2009 to just 464 in 2010 as on August 15. The number of causalities have also come down to just 15 as compared to the three digit units of last two years.

Sahay further explained that though militant activities have decreased in northeast, the security threat still persists since the global network of such ultras is active.

"The overall threat in terms of ISI's connection to insurgency in the northeast is there. That apprehension is there and there are few modules, which are working in the neighbouring states. All the networking also; we have also spoken to like networking in Bangladesh, networking in Pakistan, networking in Sri Lanka, networking in Maldives and networking in Afghanistan," said Sahay.

"All these agencies have networking of extremist fundamentalist Muslim groups. There has been separate discussion on all this and the threat is real. The matter was discussed in the recent conference of DGPs and IGPs held at New Delhi last week," he added.

The State DGP stated that coastal areas are more prone to insurgency threats and other militant based activities since the water cannot be fenced as on land.

"Because border fencing on land borders in the country has been practically completed or getting completed everywhere; so the threat on costal security is very large. It means that though you have closed the land route of the country for this thing," said Sahay.

"So therefore the threat lies - more on coastal security. All the countries with which we have coastal borders, the threat lies there. So now the thrust area is also the coastal security," he added. (ANI)