Marital problems may have driven Buxar DM Mukesh Pandey to suicide: Family

Marital problems could have driven IAS officer Mukesh Pandey to suicide in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, members of his family in Guwahati, said.

“He seemed disturbed because of differences with his wife,” a member of his family residing on Parag Kumar Das lane in Guwahati’s Bamunimaidam locality told reporters.

Meanwhile, the family members, friends and other colleagues who arrived in Ghaziabad following the alleged suicide case of the 2012 batch Bihar cadre IAS officer, said they were shocked as their son could have never taken such an extreme step.

District magistrate of Buxar in Bihar, Mukesh Pandey (29), was found dead on the railway tracks in Ghaziabad on Thursday night.

“I cannot believe he could have committed suicide. He was a lively person and the sort of man that everyone would love to meet. We don’t know how it happened,” said Vashistha Narayan Pandey, Mukesh’s uncle who arrived in Ghaziabad for the post-mortem formalities. The family will take the body to Guwahati.

Police sources said they found it surprising that the deceased announced his suicide and went to Janakpuri in Delhi to kill himself and later travelled to Ghaziabad before taking the drastic step.

“He wrote the phone number of his father-in-law so that he could be informed about his death,” Mukesh’s distraught father Sudeshwar Pandey said before leaving for Ghaziabad.

His family friends also expressed shock and said that becoming an IAS officer was a “do or die situation” for Pandey.

“He was a graduate and his elder brother is also an IFS officer. So becoming a civil servant was the only option for him. He cleared the exam in the second attempt. He was born and brought up in Guwahati as his grandfather and parents had shifted from Bihar,” said a family friend who did not want to be named.

“He loved watching and playing cricket. In Guwahati, there is prevalence of ‘gali cricket’ (street cricket) where he won many prizes. It is highly unlikely that he never gave a second thought for his three-month-old daughter,” the family friend said.

Among those present at the post-mortem house in Ghaziabad were Pandey’s uncle, friends of his brother who is an IFS officer posted in Moscow.

Pandey’s in-laws also arrived but declined to speak on the incident. However, they spoke to the railway police officials about the suicide note left behind by the deceased.

Dr NK Gupta, Ghaziabad chief medical officer, who supervised the post-mortem said, “The deceased died due to excessive bleeding caused by multiple injuries suffered during the accident. There are no injuries which could be termed suspicious.”

Pandey joined as the district magistrate of Buxar on August 4 but his wife and daughter were in Patna. Earlier, he was posted as deputy development commissioner at Katihar. His first positing was as sub-divisional officer, Balia, in Bihar’s Begusarai district.

Sources said Pandey got married in 2014 into a prominent business family, which has a car showroom in Patna. After his matriculation and higher secondary education in Assam, Pandey graduated in English from Guwahati’s prestigious Cotton College.