By IANS,
Bhubaneswar : Two days after senior IAS officer Jagadananda Panda killed four of his family members and shot himself in the head investigating officials said notes recovered from his Orissa house indicate he was stressed out by allegations of his involvement in an immigration scam. An police officer would also be sent to New Delhi for further investigations.
Police recovered four notes from his house. In one of them, the senior official of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs said he was innocent and indicated that there might be an attempt to make him a scapegoat in the scam.
“That might have prompted him to take the drastic step, but we are not sure,” a senior state police official said.
Despite pleading innocence, he was asked by authorities to go on leave for three months. He had also met some of his colleagues and seniors in New Delhi to help clear his name but it apparently it did not work, the official said on condition of anonymity.
“We are sending a police officer to Delhi in a day or two to investigate further,” the official said, adding that the circumstances under which he committed the crimes still remained a mystery.
Panda, 54, was known for his honesty among his colleagues. He had worked in the state in various capacities, including as collector, divisional commissioner of revenue and special relief commissioner before going on deputation to the central government.
“There was no corruption charge against him here,” Anup Kumar Patnaik, director of state vigilance, told IANS.
Panda was an Orissa cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer posted as protector general of emigrants in New Delhi. He had come to his ancestral village Deogaon in Bargarh district, 390 km from here, on leave a few days before his death.
The bureaucrat was Friday found dead along with his wife, father and two sisters, District Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar Biswal told IANS.
Days before Panda shot himself and his family members with his semi-automated 0.32 bore imported pistol, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team raided his office and houses to ascertain his role in an alleged human trafficking scam.
The search was reportedly conducted July 21-23 on the basis of confessional statements by a few people arrested, including a Chennai-based senior emigrants official R. Sekar and an agent, Anwar Hussain.
Sekhar, who was allegedly accepting bribes to send hundreds of people abroad in connivance with agents in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, reportedly told the CBI that he was sharing the bribe money with seniors including Panda.
But a senior Orissa police official, citing a CBI source, said: “The recovery from Panda’s houses and office was insignificant. The amount of cash and gold recovered from the houses was worth less than Rs.300,000.”
He also said the investigating agency had found nothing to establishes Panda’s involvement in the scam.
He came to his ancestral village Deogaon in Bargarh district July 27 after buying some bullets from an armoury in Bhubaneswar. He is believed to have first killed his wife at about 2 a.m. Friday before firing at his father, two sisters and only son and then turned the gun on himself.
The incident came to light after Panda’s mother came down from the first floor of the house and found the victims. She then shouted for help.
His son, who managed to survive despite being hit by a bullet on his head, is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Bhubaneswar. Doctors Sunday said he is still critical.