Lucknow, Nov 30 (IANS) Senior Uttar Pradesh bureaucrat Harminder Raj Singh’s suicide two days ago continues to puzzle family, friends and police Monday, but a number of officers in the state have ended their lives or suffered heart attacks, largely on account of undue political pressures.
According to police, Singh had been on anti-depressants for about six months and was a patient of hypertension.

Most recent was the case of Singh’s next door neighbour V.V.S. Bisen, who died on account of sudden brain haemorrhage barely three months ago. He was then holding the key office of principal secretary (forest) and had reportedly been under tremendous pressure to swear a false affidavit to be submitted before the Supreme Court.

Then there was senior police officer C.D. Kainth, who shot himself within days of being reinstated after a prolonged suspension during chief minister Mayawati’s previous stint in office.

Kainth was additional director general of police (fire services) and had to suffer because he reportedly refused to issue a big time contract to a particular firm.

Additional Superintendent of Police Niranjan also shot himself to death while he was posted in Azamgarh.

Still earlier, during chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s rule, another Indian Administrative Service Officer, Devsharan Singh Yadav, suffered a sudden heart attack after he was apparently pressurised to give a clean chit to mafia don-turned-MP Mukhtar Ansari.

He was then posted as divisional commissioner of Varanasi.

Around the same time, Rajesh Sharma, a joint director in the state information department, ended his life by jumping from the eighth floor of a government-owned residential building in the heart of Lucknow.

The only known case where a senior bureaucrat committed suicide for “personal reasons” was that of Afsar Hussain, director of tourism in the early 1980s.