Jagadananda Panda

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 1: An under-investigation IAS officer who allegedly shot dead four family members before killing himself has left behind a letter claiming he was innocent of the corruption charges against him.

“I’m innocent. The allegations levelled against me are false,” said the three-page letter written purportedly by Jagadananda Panda, 54, that also describes how his property should be distributed among his remaining relatives.

Panda’s driver said that hours before the killings at the Delhi bureaucrat’s ancestral home in Orissa on Thursday night, Panda had stopped near a temple and fired in the air, saying he planned to go hunting that night.

Panda’s body was found slumped in a chair at 3am at his home in Deogaon, Bargarh district. The bodies of his father Munshi, 75, wife Surekha, 46, and sisters Bijayalaxmi, 57, and Kishori Mishra, 54, lay in their beds — all apparently shot with the bureaucrat’s Lima .32 pistol.

His only son Swapnesh, 22, is battling critical bullet injuries and has had an eight-hour brain surgery.

Panda, a 1983 batch IAS officer in the overseas Indian affairs ministry, had recently had his office and quarters in Delhi raided by the CBI in connection with an immigration scam, and was then asked to go on three months’ leave.

Relatives and colleagues said the bureaucrat had been depressed since then and probably thought death was better than ignominy.

Before leaving Delhi, Panda phoned Swapnesh, an engineer with Maruti Udyog in Pune, to join him in Bargarh, the relatives said.

Panda arrived in Deogaon on July 26, bought 40 bullets for Rs 2,196 and began “practising” firing, police said. Twenty bullets were found in his briefcase and eight in his trouser pockets.

His driver Upendra Munda said that on Thursday afternoon, Panda had told him to stop near a temple. “He then asked whether I could see the top of the temple. Soon after, he fired three rounds in the air,” Munda told Bargarh police.

When the frightened driver asked the reason for the firing, Panda apparently said he had done it “for fun” and added that he would go “hunting” that night.

One mystery that remains is why he had spared mother Suryakanti, who had been sleeping upstairs. Suryakanti, who heard the gunshots and found the bodies, is in no condition to speak.

The police, who are waiting for the post-mortem and ballistic reports, are treating Panda’s letter, addressed to his nephew Kajal, as a suicide note.

In the letter, he has bequeathed his ancestral properties in the village to brother Bibekananda and his house in Bhubaneswar to Kajal. The letter has been sent to forensic and handwriting experts.

The last rites were performed on the banks of the Jeera in Deogaon last evening. Senior state IAS officers attended the funeral.

“We are all shocked. He was a successful collector in Orissa and had worked in three districts,” said agriculture secretary U.P. Singh.

An Orissa cadre officer, Panda had served as revenue divisional commissioner, school and mass education secretary, and special relief commissioner in Orissa.