Arunachal governor orders SIT probe into poll official's death

Arunachal Pradesh Governor Lt Gen (Retd) Nirbhay Sharma has ordered for investigation into the suspected kidnapping and killing of Mathew Dabi, an official on election duty, in East Siang district by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the state police.
Dabi, a junior teacher of Namey village, who was appointed as polling officer for the April 9 simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assembly, went missing on the day of polling.
His body was recovered on April 17 from a gorge inside a deep forest, two kilometres away from Siine village polling station under Pangin assembly constituency.
The Governor's order for the SIT probe came days after the Galo Welfare Society (GWS), a top decision-making body of the community to which Dabi belonged, had urged the concerned authorities to speed up the investigation in order to unearth the circumstances that led to the unfortunate incident.

A team of Arunachal Pradesh Elementary Teachers Association (APETA) which visited the bereaved family last week, expressed disappointment over the delay in apprehending the 'culprits' involved in the killing and threatened not to cooperate with the election department in the vote counting process if the authority failed to book the culprit by first week of May.
His family had also refused to accept an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh granted by the EC as an immediate relief on the ground that there was no conclusion to the case till then and those responsible for his death be arrested and punished.