Senior Uttar Pradesh official commits suicide

Lucknow: A senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) official in Uttar Pradesh committed suicide at his residence here early Sunday by shooting himself in the head, police said. Family and friends of the deceased say they are clueless as to why the officer took the extreme step.

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 gunshot at around 2am 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 said.

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.

Neither his shell-shocked wife, Ashima nor his close friends could guess why Singh would end his life in such a manner.

While no one was ready to go on record, it is being said that Singh was under tremendous political pressure to carry out jobs against his will.

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

"He had high blood pressure and, prima facie, it appears that he took the extreme step in a state of hypertension," Prakash said.

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