Karnataka cadre IAS officer found dead in Lucknow on his 36th birthday
SIT to probe death of IAS officer, submit report in 72 hours
On his 36th birthday, Anurag Tiwari, a 2007 batch IAS officer of Karnataka cadre, was found dead under mysterious circumstances outside a government VIP guest house in Lucknow on Wednesday morning.
Anurag, a native of Bahraich district in UP, was posted in January as Food and Civil Supplies Commissioner in Bengaluru and prior to that was Deputy Commissioner of Bidar.
He had arrived in Lucknow a few days ago after finishing a training session in Mussoorie. He was to fly back to Bengaluru on Wednesday morning and join duty on Thursday.
According to sources, doctors who conducted the autopsy said Anurag died due to asphyxia (deprivation of oxygen) but failed to specify what caused the condition. Besides, there were six injury marks on his body.
As Anurag’s kin alleged foul play, police were awaiting post mortem report to decide the next course of action.
While the IAS officer’s father cried murder and directly blamed some senior officers, Anurag’s elder brothers Alok and Mayank, both engineers, were contemplating filing a police complaint.
Mayank sought probe by an independent agency as, he said, an IAS officer was present with Anurag before he died. “Honest and clean officers are being targeted in a selective manner in Karnataka. We feel Anurag was killed as he was in the process of exposing a scam worth over Rs 2,000 crore,” he added.
Reacting to the incident, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah said the cause of death is still unknown.”We will send IAS officers from the state to get more details. He did many good works at a young age,’’ he said. IAS officers Pankaj Kumar Pandey and Abhiram G Shankar have gone to UP.
The officer was found dead on Wednesday under mysterious circumstances on a roadside in the high-security Hazratganj area in Lucknow, hardly a kilometre away from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
