By Biswajyoti Das GOLAGHAT, India, April 16 (Reuters) - Tea plantation workers linked to separatist groups in India's northeast have banded together in an extortion racket, kidnapping at least 13 senior estate managers in the last two months, officials said. The All Adivasi National Liberation Army (AANLA) has been formed in the last six months by powerful separatist groups in Assam state as a new front while India's renewed anti-insurgency efforts have begun to cripple their activities elsewhere. The AANLA has more than 100 undercover militants working on estates, mostly in the Golaghat region in southeastern Assam. The group has brought around 40 tea estates into its racket. "Our managers remain terrified and even their families are suffering from fear," said one tea estate owner in Golaghat, asking not to be identified for his safety. All 13 kidnapped managers and tea estate executives were safely returned after ransoms were paid. The extorted money is passed on to larger rebel groups in the northeast, including a faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), security officials said. These rebel groups are fighting for independent homelands for indigenous people in the region. "We can hardly move freely in our own tea gardens nowadays," the estate owner said. "If the situation continues like this we will have no option other than to close down our business." The new racket has emerged at a time when the tea industry has been hit by rising wage and employee welfare bills. Large tea companies are opting out of the plantation business in favour of the more lucrative marketing of tea. It is the smaller tea companies and owners which are bearing the brunt of the latest extortion drive. The state produces about half of India's tea output. The AANLA claims it is fighting to safeguard the tribal culture of the plantation workers whose ancestors were brought from northern India by British colonialists to labour there. "It is not a well-organised group and they don't have well-thought out aims and objectives. It is made of a bunch of guys who are on to making easy money," said a senior intelligence officer, who asked not to be identified.
