Lucknow, Nov. 29: A senior IAS officer overseeing the lavish memorials whose construction by Mayavati has been challenged in the Supreme Court committed suicide early today.

Police said Harminder Raj Singh, Uttar Pradesh’s principal secretary (housing), shot himself with his licensed revolver and that he suffered “from bouts of depression”.

But the Samajwadi Party and the Congress suspected foul play and demanded a CBI probe. They alleged that Singh had been facing “tremendous pressure” to continue the constructions in violation of the Supreme Court’s stay.

Additional director-general (law and order) A.K. Jain said Singh, in his late 50s and described by colleagues as an “honest and upright” officer, killed himself around 1.30am at his official residence. His family — wife, a son and a daughter — stays in Delhi.

Jain claimed the officer’s relatives had told the police that he had been “very depressed” for the past week. “It is a tragedy. On the face of it, there seems to be no foul play,” Jain said while promising a “detailed” investigation.

But the suspicions refused to die down, not the least because of the haste with which Singh’s body was sent to Delhi this afternoon and the absence of any suicide note.

The government had the post-mortem video-graphed and sent Singh’s revolver for forensic tests, but the misgivings did not go away.

Singh funeral was held at Delhi’s Lodhi Road crematorium late this evening. A number of his batch-mates and relatives were present.

In Lucknow, Samajwadi state president Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the officer was under tremendous pressure from the chief minister’s secretariat. “Efficient officers in the Bahujan Samaj Party regime are being harassed and forced to carry out illegal tasks. Only a CBI probe can bring out the real reason, ” Yadav said.

Echoing the demand was P.L. Punia, a retired bureaucrat who was principal secretary to Mayavati in 2002 but is now a Congress MP from Barabanki. “I always knew him as a lively person and the reason behind his death cannot be personal. It must be official and should be probed by the CBI.”

Punia said Singh’s death raised suspicions as the 1978 batch officer from Punjab was overseeing the controversial memorials. These included the ones dedicated to B.R. Ambedkar and BSP founder Kanshi Ram, which are under the apex court’s glare.

The constructions have been challenged in court mainly for alleged waste of public money worth over Rs 2,000 crore.