Agartala, Jan 15 (IANS): The Tripura police on Friday recovered the body of a trader 50 days after he was kidnapped at gunpoint by terrorists from the northern part of the state, officials said.

Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Arindam Nath told IANS that the slain Litan Nath's body was recovered by the police from a forest in the Khedachara area in North Tripura district.

Earlier the state police, Tripura State Rifles and central para-military forces had jointly launched a massive combing operation to rescue the trader and also detained four suspected National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) militants from the areas adjoining Mizoram and Bangladesh.

Litan Nath's wife told the police that a few heavily armed militants had raided their house on November 27 and looted jewellery, cash and abducted her husband.

The police said that the abductors had demanded Rs 1.5 lakh in ransom for the release of Nath, who has four young children.

The NLFT extremists had earlier on December 23 released three persons after 17 days of captivity. Supervisor Subhash Bhowmik, 48, JCB driver Subal Debnath, 37, and worker Gana Mohan Tripura, 37, were kidnapped by the NLFT ultras 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.

The NLFT militants had whisked away the three hostages to Bangladesh since the crime spot was just along the international border. The Government-owned National Building Construction Corporation was assigned the task to put up a barbed wire fence along the India-Bangladesh border to check crimes and infiltration.

After several years of lull, of late terrorist activities have resurfaced in Tripura, which was until 2008-09 devastated by the decades old insurgency.