UP IAS officer kills himself

Lucknow: A senior Uttar Pradesh Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer committed suicide at his residence in Lucknow early Sunday by shooting himself in the head, police said.

Family and friends say they are clueless as to why the officer killed himself. Harminder Raj Singh, principal secretary (housing) in the state government, used his licensed revolver to shoot himself at his residence on Vikramaditya Marg here, an official said.

"The servant heard a gun shot at around 2 a.m. on Sunday and informed the police. We reached there immediately and found him lying in a pool of blood in his bedroom. He shot himself point-blank in his temple and the doctors declared him brought dead at the trauma centre of the medical college," Superintendent of Police (East) Harish Kumar told IANS.

No suicide note was recovered from the spot and the matter is being investigated, he said.

Singh was a 1978 batch IAS officer. According to sources, Singh was under a lot of pressure on account of political interference in his work.

His wife, Ashima, and his friends could not say why Singh would end his life in such a manner.

While none was ready to go on record, it is being said that the officer was under tremendous political pressure to carry out jobs that his conscience would not allow him to do.

Lucknow district police chief Prem Prakash sought to attribute the suicide to "hyper- tension" that Singh was suffering from.

"He was a patient of high blood pressure and, prima facie, it appears that he took the extreme step in a state of hyper-tension," Prakash said.

One of the victim's colleagues said: "I do not understand how anyone would kill himself because of high blood pressure. And where other types of pressures were concerned, Harry (as he was popularly referred to by friends) was not the type who I would imagine taking a gun to shoot himself."

Chief secretary Atul Kumar Gupta, who was among the first few to reach Singh's residence shortly after he was informed about the incident, also failed to understand any reason behind the suicide.

"He was one of our dynamic officers who was highly dependable. And since we would interact almost every alternate day, I never saw him tense or depressed," Gupta said.

Rated as a "happy-go-lucky" fellow, who was a through-and-through extrovert and into outdoor activity including sports, Singh was always known to be bubbling with life.

"In the 31 years that we have been together in the IAS, I had never seen Harry getting depressed over anything," said another batch-mate Pankaj Agrawal, the state's principal secretary, transport.

Those who were with him at a post-wedding celebration of yet another IAS official Desh Deepak Verma's son here until late Saturday night could not believe the news flash on various TV channels Sunday morning.

"He was in a great mood and even danced along with his wife, at my son's 'ladies sangeet' function where we were together until around 10 last night. So where was the question of any depression," asked Verma.

None could have imagined that barely two-and-a-half hours after leaving Verma's party, he would pick up his gun and end his life.

His wife reportedly told a friend that earlier in the day, Singh had asked for the keys to the cupboard in which his personal licensed revolver was kept.

"His wife had dozed off when he went out of the bedroom and shot himself around 1.20 a.m.," said a senior police officer.

Singh's post-mortem report confirmed death due to bullet injury on the temple.

Singh was declared "brought dead" at the Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University Trauma Centre. The body was Sunday taken to Delhi for the last rites.