New Delhi, May 13: An officer of the special cell of Delhi police, who was part of the team that cracked the Parliament attack case, was found dead on Saturday with his live-in partner at their Gurgaon home.

The bodies of Badrish Dutt, a 1991 batch officer handpicked into the special cell in 1998, and Geeta Sharma were found by police who broke into the house following a 7am call to the control room by the domestic help.

Sharma’s body, with a bullet wound in the stomach, lay on top of Dutt’s in the lobby of the flat that they had shared for a year, police sources said. The 45-year-old officer from Uttarakhand, who was estranged from his wife, had been shot in the temple from his service revolver. Three bullets were found near them.

“The flat belonged to Geeta Sharma and preliminary inquiries indicate that it was a suicide pact since we have no information of any altercations between the duo. He was a special cell inspector and he was staying with her. Inquiries about Sharma have revealed that she was incarcerated in Tihar in a forgery case,” said additional commissioner of police, Gurgaon, Maheshwar Dayal.

Dutt, a senior inspector with the special cell, was known as an expert in phone interceptions and surveillance and played a key role in Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s arrest, sources said. He was part of the team that investigated the Red Fort attack and received a President’s police gallantry award in 2003 for fighting gangsters who had kidnapped a businessman.

However, like several of his colleagues in the special cell, he also faced allegations of involvement in fake encounters.

A departmental inquiry was on against him for misconduct after his wife, who lives in Faridabad, complained that he had left her and was living with another woman. The complaint gave details of Sharma’s imprisonment.

Sources close to the officer said he was very “depressed and upset about his personal life being dragged in front of his colleagues”.

The sources said Dutt met Sharma, also 45 and who was running a detective agency in the capital, during one of his investigations. She was in jail for three weeks following her arrest in March this year in a forgery case relating to documents of the home ministry. At present, she was out on bail.