Tripura rebels 'making porn films'

Our Experiences has been widely circulated

Rebels in India's north-eastern state of Tripura are making pornographic films to raise money for their separatist campaign, officials say.

The information has come from surrendered guerrillas of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), according to police.

They say the rebels are forcing captured tribal women, and some men, to take part in the films.

The films are then dubbed to be sold in India and neighbouring countries.

Remote areas

The former guerrillas of the NLFT have told police their leaders not only sexually abused scores of tribal girls recruited into the rebel army but also used them - and some male guerrillas - to produce scores of porn films, officials say.

"The films were found to be dubbed in Burmese, Bengali, Thai and Hindi, suggesting they were being marketed to many countries in the region," said Ghanshyam Murari Srivastava, Tripura's police chief.

He said police have recovered scores of pornographic DVDs featuring young women and men from various parts of the state, including remote areas such as Amarpur and Gandacherra.

Such pornographic DVDs have also been recovered from NLFT bases inside Bangladesh after they were raided by the Bangladesh army, the police chief said.

'Sleek product'

Discreet inquiries with video production houses in Tripura confirmed what the surrendered rebels are reported to have said.

"We do get orders to process raw porn shot in remote tribal areas from time to time," the owner of a video production company in the state's capital Agartala told the BBC.

He did not want to be named.

Production houses say rebels give them good money for their work

"We get a lot more money , much above our normal rates, to process these films and deliver a sleek final product.

"We know the insurgents are behind these films. When we process their raw stock, we can see boys standing around with automatic rifles and revolvers pulling in girls but we are supposed to cut all that out and just concentrate on the sex," the owner said.

"It is very good money and we don't think it is right to question the insurgents anyway," he said.

The latest pornographic video that has become sought after by young men in Tripura is Hamjagoi Tongthoklaima, or Our Experiences.

Like a feature film, it runs a full cast of "heroes" and "heroines".

Initially it appears to be a love film with boys and girls holding hands and walking past lakes and trees. But soon the video starts featuring close-up shots of the actors undressing and sex.

Since Tripura's tribal young men and women have standard Mongoloid features, such pornographic films can pass off as being made anywhere in south-east Asia.

'Actress fled'

Surrendered NLFT rebels say their leaders have always abused tribal women , both in the villages and also those recruited into the rebel army.

A study by two researchers, Meenakshi Sen Bandopadhyay and Jayanta Bhattacharya, documented in detail sexual abuses perpetrated by the NLFT.

"The NLFT rebels did not allow a tribal girl in North Tripura to get married because they wanted to enjoy her by turns. Her parents were helpless because they lived in a tea garden in a remote area," the study says.

One surrendered NLFT guerrilla Mohan Reang said: "One tribal actress Anita Reang who played the heroine in some local films had to flee her village because a top NLFT leader wanted to whisk her away."

But while forcing tribal women to have sex with them at gunpoint or carrying them away to the rebel camps is not new, using them to produce pornography certainly is.

"This seems to have started a year or two back," says local journalist Manas Paul who began legal proceedings to bring this to the notice of the authorities.

"But it is now rampant, so many of these discs are circulating all over our state and possibly in other parts of northeast India as well," he said.

But in some other northeast Indian states like Manipur, the rebels punish those who produce pornography.

In the state of Manipur, some girls who acted in porn films were shot in the legs, as were the producers.

Tripura, where militancy is an industry

They fought for a separate homeland, killed people and spilt their own blood. Now, they merely play at being terrorists, brandish false weapons and stagemanage surrenders. All for a fistfull of rupees.

The 20-year-old insurgency movement in Tripura has reduced itself to a farce, with many describing it as little more than a cottage industry. And from their hideouts, deep inside Bangladesh or in the remote interiors of India's North-East, has tumbled out a horrid tale of greed and manipulation. Also, a tale of the Indian government's inefficiency that encourages such deception.

Sources in the intelligence department said tribal youth these days "surrender"just to earn a fast buck and a rehabilitation package that temporarily takes them out of grinding povery. What they will not say is that these fake surrenders, which have led an already befuddled youth to opt for militancy just to be able to surrender, is a reflection of the government's skewed policies and irresponsible politics.

During the last two decades, more precisely since August 10, 1988, when the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) headed by Bijoy Hrangkhawl surrendered before authorities following tripartite talks, more than 6,600 militants formally surrendered before government functionaries and security forces. Here is the catch, though. The nearly 7,000 militants "surrendered"when, according to the government's own estimate, the TNV had just about 800-900 militants.

While some of the surrendered militants were indeed top guns in their outfits and were hardcore underground operators, the rest were never involved in militancy. They were, by and large, unemployed tribal youth brought to "surrender functions"by leaders who wanted to show off their strength. Intriguingly, many of the "militants"came bare-handed. Some made a mockery of the surrender show by coming to it with wooden guns made by carpenters in villages!

Not that this farce is specific only to Tripura. In Assam, during the height of the insurgency, students, small time political workers and petty goons lined up for surrender. They needed the money, the government needed to show the numbers to the Centre. Both benefitted. For those surrendering, the money was good -- Rs 60,000 in grant and Rs 1.50 lakh as soft loans for which the guarantor was the government itself. Some of the surrendered militants used the money to get married, others bought motorbikes and cars with it.

As per the Centre's surrender policy for North East militants, only those rebels who came overground with firearms were eligible for the rehabilitation package and financial assistance. Not those who brought kitchen knives and toy guns.
In Tripura, it touched a different level though. During the surrender of National Liberation Front of Tripura (both Nayanbasi Jamatia and Mantu Koloy factions), militant leaders openly "recruited"youths to join the surrender ceremony, demanding Rs 15,000 from them to be included in the list.

More surprisingly, leaders of militant groups often got the same set of people to surrender time and again. The "rebels"would surrender for some time, then head home or into the jungles after they got bored with "camp life".
Pleading helplessness, a senior police officer said, "What can we possibly do if the militants go back to insurgency after surrendering. Some of them get bored and others can't adjust to urban life. Moreover, we can't have security personnel following each militant."

Forget lower-level cadre, out of the top six senior insurgent leaders, three -- Kamini Debbarma, Binoy Debbarma and Dhanu Koloy -- have themselves surrendered thrice each. Kamini Debbarma, the NLFT's self-styled home secretary, got a jeep the first time he surrendered as a rehabilitation package. Unhappy with the reward, he returned to the jungles to form another outfit in 1991. Four years later he came walking to Agartala to surrender, got something and went underground again after a year. In 2004, he resurfaced and surrendered all over again.

Unable to justify or explain why this was happening, a top police officer simply said, "The matter is now being seriously looked into."