A gunman was beaten to death in India's lawless eastern state of Bihar on Thursday after he shot and wounded a former government minister campaigning for state assembly elections, a report said.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was civil aviation minister in the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, was shot in the left arm in Bihar's Sasaram district and rushed to a hospital by helicopter for treatment, the Press Trust of India reported.
Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which lost federal power in May 2004 elections, battered the attacker to death after the shooting, the Press Trust said.
Prasad, who also held the cabinet posts of information and broadcasting as well as mining, was attacked on a speaker's dais during a rally ahead of a four-phase state assembly election in Bihar.
The first phase is set for October 18, followed by three more rounds on October 28, November 13 and November 19.
State elections held in February threw up a hung parliament and Bihar was put under a federally-appointed governor after the 243-seat assembly was dismissed.
The Bharatiya Janata Party opposed the move by the federal Congress party-led government because it claimed it was within striking distance of cobbling together the 122 legislators needed to run the state.
Bihar, which is India's second most populous state with 80 million people and has the second highest number of seats in the federal parliament behind Uttar Pradesh, is a key battleground state for Indian political parties.
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