Sudden death

 

 

Residents of Deogoan village, Bargarh district, Orissa are in a state of deep shock. They were startled out of their sleep hours before dawn on July 31 to find senior IAS officer Jagadananda Panda, 54, and five of his family members lying in a pool of blood.

Although the local police have concluded it was Panda himself who shot five members of his family before taking his own life, the reasons behind the extreme step are shrouded in mystery.

Panda, from the IAS batch of 1983, was protocol-general of emigration in the overseas department of the ministry of external affairs. He had arrived in the village, about 300 km from Bhubaneswar, a couple of days earlier with his wife, Surekha, and only son, Swapnesh, 22.

He had been told to proceed on leave after CBI sleuths raided his houses in Delhi and his native village on July 22. Panda, an Orissa cadre officer on deputation in Delhi, was suspected to be involved in an emigration scam.

In a suicide note the police found at the spot, Panda asserted he was innocent and lamented he had been “betrayed” by his “simplicity”. He, however, named no individual or agency that might have caused him distress; nor did he mention what it was exactly that he was running away from.

On July 31, the Deogoan villagers rushed six profusely bleeding members of the Panda family — the officer himself, his wife, son, octogenarian father and two middle-aged sisters — to a nearby nursing home where the four were declared brought dead. Panda, who was still alive, and his son were taken to the VSS Medical College Hospital in Burla. The IAS officer breathed his last there.

Swapnesh, in a coma, was airlifted to Kalinga Hospital, Bhubaneswar. At the time of going to press, the young man with a bullet wound in his head was in a critical condition.

On the fateful evening, Panda was reportedly in a jovial mood. He went shopping with his wife and visited several relatives in Bargarh town. None of them had any forewarning. Those who knew Panda are baffled at the cold-blooded manner in which he eliminated the people closest to him. Was the tainted IAS officer trying to shield his family from a truth that would have shattered them?

Questions are being raised about the ramifications of the emigration scam. Had Panda, wittingly or unwittingly, compromised the security interests of the nation as a result of the ‘illegal’ emigrations his office facilitated?

It is believed the CBI and the IB were on the trail of a gang engaged in securing Indian passports for illegal Bangladeshi migrants who were smuggled into Europe via the Middle East. Some of these migrants, who were aided indirectly by the emigration scam, had spent time in ISI-run terror camps in Pakistan before entering India. The case was getting too hot for Panda and he probably feared it was only a matter of time before he would be implicated for ‘links’ with terrorists.

Though the CBI did not find any hard evidence against Panda, he was asked to go on leave for three months. The raids on his Delhi residence had yielded Rs 10 lakh in cash and documents of property worth Rs 2.17 crore. A subordinate officer of the emigration department in Chennai, R Sekhar, and an agent, Anwar Hussein, were arrested by the CBI. A sum of Rs 2.03 crore in cash and several incriminating documents were seized. Sekhar reportedly confessed he had accepted Rs 8 crore from the agent to send thousands of workers illegally to various Gulf countries. He also admitted he had shared the spoils with Panda, his boss in Delhi. Panda was under severe mental strain when he left Delhi.

He called his only son, an engineer working in Pune, to join him on the trip. They landed in Bhubaneswar on July 27 and reached Deogoan the next day. In Bhubaneswar, he visited the Jena Armoury to collect his revolver. He also purchased 40 bullets.

In Deogoan, Panda went to a secluded spot near the village and tested his revolver by firing in the air. Upendra Munda, his driver, recalls: “We went to a wooded place, where he fired thrice. He asked me whether it ‘sounded’ right. He said he needed the gun for hunting.”

Panda invited his sisters over for a get-together in his house. While two of them — Bijaylaxmi (56) and Kishori (44) — accepted the invitation, the third, Manjari, declined, citing a preoccupation.

“We seized the pistol along with unused cartridges from the deceased. The suicide note did not specify what he meant by ‘betrayal’. But it was clear that the officer was at his tether’s end,” Bargarh SDPO BK and investigating officer Sahu told TSI.

Documents seized by the police have revealed that Panda has willed his Bhubaneswar property to his step-brother (Bibekananda) and his land in the village to his nephew, Durga (son of Bijaylaxmi, whom he killed). He did not mention the names of either his wife or son in the will as he had obviously made up his mind to end their lives along with his own.

Panda had as many as nine siblings, including a stepbrother and three stepsisters. His father, Manuswi Panda, 81, had married twice. His second wife, Suryakanti (Panda’s stepmother) was among those who were present in the house on the fateful night but survived to tell the tale. The ballistic examination revealed that Panda and his wife were in one room. The two sisters were in an adjoining room and his father and son were in a third room. His wife was the first victim and he shot her when she was seated on a chair. The probe team has inferred that Panda and his wife were sitting facing each other, discussing something before he went on a shooting spree. The remaining victims of Panda’s ghastly plot were all asleep when he shot them in cold blood one after another. The post mortem reports have confirmed that they were all shot in the head at point-blank range.