A suspected militant shot dead a former Arunachal Pradesh MLA in a village in Tirap district where he had gone on some personal work on Saturday, officials said.
The incident occurred at around 3 p.m. near Raho village which is close to the Myanmar border.
Yumsen Matey, a former Congress legislator, along with three of his followers had gone to the village for some personal work when someone took him towards a jungle on some pretext and fired at him killing him on the spot, Tirap SP Rahul Gupta said.
The police launched a search operation for the culprit.
While the SP declined to comment on the identity of the militant, defence sources hinted at the involvement of the NSCN-KYA in the killing.
Matey was elected as an MLA from Khonsa West assembly constituency on a Congress ticket in 2009. He joined the BJP in 2015 and, earlier this year, declared his willingness to contest the assembly polls in 2024.
Before entering politics, he served as district adult education officer in Changlang district.
Out of the 239 insurgency-related fatalities in the state since March 2000, 183 have occurred in the Tirap-Changlang-Longding (TCL) region, according to official data.
