By TC News Desk
Agartala, 8th September 2025 : Decades after the 1980 ethnic violence that left thousands of Bengalis dead across Tripura, the Amra Bangali party has renewed its call for justice demanding a judicial inquiry and rehabilitation for affected families.
The unrest began on June 6, 1980 following a market boycott movement in Lembucherra rapidly escalated into widespread violence across Mandai, Takarjala and Jampuijala. Local people accounts and historical records describe the events as one of the darkest chapters in Tripura’s history, with mass killings, rapes and displacement of Bengali civilians.
The Amra Bangali party alleges that the violence was politically enabled, citing a secret meeting between tribal leader Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhwal and then Chief Minister Nripen Chakraborty on February 16, 1980. “If I had been born in a tribal family, I would have also become an extremist,” Chakraborty reportedly told journalists at Kolkata in 1984.
Former Chief Minister Manik Sarkar echoed similar sentiments in 1999, stating, “Some misguided tribal youth are agitating for the creation of an independent Tripura with guns in their hands. I do not blame those youth.” That same year, CPI(M) leader Badal Chowdhury added, “If the extremists want… and if the people of the country want, independence can also be given.”
In a press communiqué issued today, Amra Bangali party secretary Gouranga Rudra Pal demanded the formation of a High Court-led Judicial Inquiry Commission to identify those responsible for the June 1980 massacre. The party also called for Rs 2 crore in compensation, land and security for families affected by extremist violence from 1980 to the present.
“The massacre in Tripura has surpassed even the Jewish massacre,” then Union Home Minister Zail Singh had remarked, though no legal action was taken against the state government at the time.
The Amra Bangali party warned that continued inaction would amount to betrayal by the ruling BJP, urging the government to “prove their goodwill” through concrete steps.
