Senior IAS officer,four family members found dead

“The sight was horrific,blood everywhere. It was ghastly,” said a police official.

The cops based their suspicion after seizing a suicide note which did not actually say why he was committing suicide,but talked of transferring the ownership of prpoperties to family relatives after his death. “He seemed to be under depression. The note leads us in the direction that he had made up his mind to kill himself,” Bargarh SP Ashok Biswal told ‘The Indian Express’.

Panda’s surviving mother,who slept in the upper floor of the house,rushed downstairs after she heard the gunshots. She found the bodies of her husband,her two daughters in two rooms. When she came out to the front verandah,she found Panda slumped in a chair and Panda’s wife lying lifeless in a pool of blood a little away. The pistol was lying a little away.

Police believe the IAS officer may have first fired at his father killing him on the spot and then his son sleeping with grandfather in one living room. Panda then shot sisters Bijaylaxmi and Kishori in another room while they were sleeping. He then shot his wife outside the room before shooting himself in the head while sitting in a chair.

Neighbors in the village said on Thursday that they had heard the shots around the time when the incident occurred,but did not think anything was amiss. “We first thought someone was banging a tin drum. We never imagined that someone in our building was shooting,” a neighbor told the police.

Panda,whom colleagues described as popular and respected,had just come to his village from Bhubaneswar on July 28. A day before he arrived in his village,he had bought 40 rounds of bullets from an armoury in Bhubaneswar.

“Yesterday,he had hired a vehicle from a travel agency and went to a desolate place in Bhatli area. There he fired 3 rounds into the air from his licensed pistol which scared the driver. When the driver asked why he was firing,he asked him ‘how far would the shots be heard?’He then came back home,” the SP said.

Relatives said Panda’s official residence in Delhi was raided by CBI about a week ago. “We’re in the midst of an investigation. The police are working on developing evidence on this and we’ll know more about how and why this happens,” the SP said.

“No words can describe this tragedy. No one I know could understand what would drive anyone to take matters in to their own hands in such a lethal manner,” said a friend of Panda.

Panda was a 1983-batch IAS officer and had worked as several important posts in Orissa bureaucracy before he left for Delhi on a central deputation in 2006.

Deeply saddened by the killings,Orissa chief secretary Ajit Tripathy has called a condolence meeting of all IAS officer this evening. “It’s a sad day for the Orissa bureaucracy. I can’t recall a more day as hard as today,” a senior IAS officer said.