The BJP-led Arunachal Pradesh government has written to the Union home ministry to direct the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe the December 16 assassination of a former MLA Yumsen Matey by unidentified miscreants, a development that saw massive protest rallies in four district headquarters on Friday.
The killing of Matey has come ahead of the 2024 Assembly and the general elections, which will be held simultaneously in the frontier state. The former Congress MLA was also a BJP ticket aspirant from the Khonsa West Assembly seat. He had joined BJP in 2015.
The state government wrote to the MHA on Thursday seeking appropriate direction to the NIA, a central agency dealing with terror-related crimes across states, for a comprehensive investigation into the case, an officer said.
The All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU), which took out a massive rally in the capital city Itanagar on Friday seeking justice for Matey, had submitted a memorandum to the state government on Tuesday seeking a time-bound and thorough probe.
The AAPSU placed the demand for an NIA probe in a memorandum to Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday, flagging the security concerns of the residents of the state’s TCL (Tirap, Changlang and Longding) area for decades despite the AFSPA, a central law to ensure peace in areas declared as disturbed, being in force in the three districts for decades.
Participants in the AAPSU rally raised slogans seeking action against NSCN militants which are active in the TCL area.
A protester in Itanagar told media persons that maximum central troops have been deployed in the TCL region but killing, extortions, kidnappings and intimidation continue. “What are the central and state governments doing to ensure safety and peace in the area? Before Matey, a sitting MLA was also killed,” he pointed out.
AAPSU general secretary Ritum Tali told The Telegraph that in their memorandum to Shah, they have demanded, among others, restoration of peace and normality in the TCL whose residents live in fear of “non-state actors”.
