Agartala, Terrorist outfits in Tripura are facing serious fund crisis and manpower shortage, forcing their cadres to return to the mainstream by deserting the extremists groups, Tripura Director General of Police (DGP) V.S. Yadav said on Thursday.

The police chief said that the hostile situations in their outfits and hideouts forced four top National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) terrorists, who were trained at a camp in Myanmar, to surrender on Thursday and deposit some sophisticated arms and ammunition.

He said that during preliminary interrogations, the NLFT militants said that since November 2018, 17 hardcore NLFT militants led by their leaders along with many other terrorists belonging to various outfits of northeast India underwent special arms training at a camp located at Tagga in Myanmar.

"Feeling serious frustrations over the prevailing predicaments in the NLFT outfit and continuous pressure from the security forces, they deserted their outfit and returned to the mainstream," the DGP said, adding that the surrendered militants would be rehabilitated under the "Central government's package 2018".

The surrendered militants -- self-styled assistant foreign secretary of NLFT Ratham Kaloi, assistant organising secretary Joy Sadhan Jamatia, assistant publicity and information secretary Madhu Ranjan Noatia, and deputy chief of army staff Kukila Tripura -- have deposited two AK-56 rifles, an AK bayonet, four loaded AK magazines, 119 rounds of AK ammunition, a wireless handset and cash worth 1.5 lakh Myanmar currency (kyat).

Meanwhile, three persons kidnapped from Tripura by NLFT extremists have been released after 17 days of captivity in adjoining Bangladesh territory, the police said on Thursday.

Supervisor Subhash Bhowmik, 48, JCB driver Subal Debnath, 37, and worker Gana Mohan Tripura, 37, were kidnapped at gunpoint by the NLFT extremists from Malda Kumar Para in eastern Tripura's Dhalai district on December 7 while they were engaged in border fencing work along the international border.