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India deployed military helicopters to hunt down tribal militants in the northeastern state of Assam on Thursday after rebels killed 75 people this week, the deadliest in the remote area in years, Reuters reported.

Assam has a history of sectarian bloodshed and armed groups fighting for secession from India.

On Tuesday, suspected militants of a faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland attacked four villages in the space of an hour, pulling people out of their homes and shooting them dead.

More than half of the victims were women and children of tea plantation workers from outside the state, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said as more bodies were discovered in the remote area.

The attacks appeared to have been in retaliation for an offensive that security forces launched against the Bodo faction a month ago that inflicted heavy losses. The militant group lost 40 men and a huge quantity of arms and ammunition, state police said.

The rebels turned on plantation workers, believing that some were informing the police about their movements.

"This is an act of terrorism. We are going to be very tough," federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who flew to the state, told reporters.