Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, Jan 22: Investigating the death of former Doimukh MLA Ngurang Pinch, the police have arrested three persons so far. The arrested persons are Ngurang Abhram, Ngurang Nega and Ngurang Tongke, the police said.
When contacted by this daily, the police said that all three were arrested on different grounds.
“Ngurang Abhram is a prime suspect in the case as he allegedly had a minor altercation with late Pinch prior to his death,” said a police officer.
“Tongke was arrested because he gave inconsistent statements and he had slept next to Pinch during the night at the camp, and Nega was arrested as he was the lone boatman, who helped the members to the other bank,” the officer added.
However, the officer admitted that so far they have not been able to pin down the exact reason which led to Pinch’s death.
“We have been putting all effort to crack the case, but we may need some more time,” the officer said.
The police further informed that the post-mortem report says that the reason of the death was drowning, and that the report does not mention any details of injuries.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) reportedly took equipped technicians from the BSNL and other private service providers to the place of the incident after the deceased’s family alleged that they were not informed of Pinch’s death earlier despite availability of phone networks in the area.
Pinch’s family members have been demanding that the CBI take over the case from the SIT, alleging that the state crime branch failed to act against a few people.
Their other demands are arrest of ‘all the 21 suspects’; seizure of their mobile phones and submission of the phone records; and ‘exposure of the sex racket involving young girls in Arunachal Pradesh.’
There were seven girls that were part of the rafting team. Three of the girls later met the press to give their version of the story where they had alleged that two former ministers asked them to give a police statement, with their signatures on an agreement copy stating that their names would not be disclosed to the media.
Pinch died on 18 November last year during a rafting expedition with his friends. Many prominent personalities, including former ministers Tater Kipa and Atum Welly, were also part of the rafting team.
Both the former ministers deny any wrongdoing.
