Bhubaneswar, Aug. 11: An alleged delay in bill payment made a contractor fly into a rage and attack officials of the Indian Red Cross at its Unit III office here today. The Red Cross state unit secretary’s office was also ransacked.

Thursday had begun like any other day at the state unit office of the Red Cross. The calm, however, was ripped apart in 10 minutes when contractor Balaram Pradhan raided the secretary’s office with a knife in his hand.

Brandishing the knife, Pradhan barged into the office of Red Cross state unit secretary Mangala Prasad Mohanty. Apprehending danger, Mohanty gave Pradhan the slip and hid himself inside a toilet.

“Seeing him enter my office, I rushed into the toilet. He had got hold of my shirt, but I managed to free myself from his clutches and locked the toilet from inside,” the honorary secretary, who has been working here since March 2009, said.

Accusing Pradhan of abusing him, Mohanty said the angry contractor also smashed the chairs and glass partitions in his office. The joint secretary, whose office is barely five metres from Mohanty’s, was also not spared. Joint secretary Madhu Sudan Rao said that before ransacking Mohanty’s office, the accused had assaulted him.

“Pradhan entered my office and started abusing me. When I asked him to get out, he pushed the table at me and the official documents fell to the ground. I also sustained minor injuries,” said Rao.

Once Pradhan fled after his 10-minute long violent act, the Red Cross officials lost no time in informing the police control room about the incident and the Kharavela Nagar police soon rushed to the office. Mohanty also lodged a compliant with Kharavela Nagar police, but none has been arrested so far.

Mohanty said Pradhan was working with another contractor Pramod Sahu, who had won the Rs 8-lakh contract for white washing and painting the Red Cross building. As the work was found to be of poor quality, the final bill of Rs 3 lakh was put on hold.

However, sources said that after the contractor did the work again, a letter had reached the secretary’s office on August 6 to release the money. But before he could take any steps, the contractor attacked him.

Alleging that today’s attack on him was a pre-meditated act, Mohanty suspected the hand of some of his staff in it. He said the attack came as he was trying to take steps against the irregularities that had occurred in the past.

The police said they were investigating the matter and a manhunt had been launched to arrest the culprits.