Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, Dec 6: Two years after the death of her father under mysterious circumstances, Ngurang Reena, daughter of former Doimukh MLA Ngurang Pinch, refuses to give up, saying her family is still fighting for justice “and will not stop seeking answers till the culprits are brought to justice.”
Pinch was found dead in the river near Ramghat, in Poma-Jote circle of Papum Pare district, in the early hours of 18 November, 2017. Two special investigation teams (SIT) had been constituted to probe the case, but without any result. Currently, an SIT of the Arunachal Pradesh Police, which has been constituted for the third time, is investigating the case.
Reena, who used to be a lecturer at the University of Delhi and is currently a research scholar at JNU, New Delhi, recently shared details of her father’s case on a digital media platform. In it, Reena said her father had left home on the morning of 17 November, 2017, for a rafting expedition, at the invitation of his friends, who were former ministers. Hours later, the family received the news of his death.
Reena claimed that her father had been murdered the night before, and that the murderers disposed of his body in the river. She maintains that her father could not have drowned because he was an excellent swimmer. She also alleges that the postmortem report “failed to mention that there were some wounds” on her father’s body.
Reena says that the fact that the 21 people who were part of the rafting expedition claimed that they had all calmly slept the night before and some of them happened to discover Pinch’s body in the river the next morning “should be enough to raise suspicion.”
Despite her family’s firm belief that Pinch was “killed and essential pieces of evidence were destroyed,” nothing conclusive emerged from the investigation conducted by the two consecutive SITs earlier.
Also, following repeated pleas by the former MLA’s family, the state government on 13 July, 2018, transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). However, the CBI in early 2019 notified the state government that it had rejected the case, citing inadequate resources, and that “the case does not have any interstate ramifications.”
However, the family of the former MLA is still fighting to get justice, and has, as a last resort, announced a reward for any information regarding the case.
On being contacted by The Arunachal Times, SIT SP Navneet Singh Brar informed that 20 people underwent lie detector tests (both polygraph and narco analysis tests) at the state forensic laboratory (SFL) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, in 2018, but no incriminating evidence was found by the SFL.
“So far in our investigation, no incriminating evidence is found of homicide and foul play,” said the SP.
Brar informed that the postmortem report by a three-member medical board concluded that the “cause of death was asphyxia, resulting from drowning.”
