Indian Forest Service Association (Central Unit) is likely to take up the issue of suicide of Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) of Meghalaya N Luikham with Union Home Ministry after new facts have emerged in the case. The Association office bearers are likely to meet the Union Home Secretary with their demand for a CBI inquiry into the case. They have already written a memorandum with the same demand to Meghalaya Chief Secretary but are yet to receive a response.
Mr Luikham apparently hanged himself to death in his official residence on March 13 morning at 7.30 am. The IFS Association has alleged that he was facing immense pressure from mining lobby of the state. They had even got a junior officer to level sexual harassment charges against Mr Luikham.
NEW FACTS
Mr Luikham hasn’t left a suicide note and there was no stool or chair found in the room in which his body was found hanging from the ceiling fan. He was supposed to leave that morning for an official meeting in Delhi. He had called his driver early that morning to take him to Guwahati airport. “He was not a person with suicidal tendencies”, claim his colleagues who know him for over two decades.
Moreover, the CCTV installed at his residence was found unplugged. The autopsy report was inconclusive, yet the police declared it a case of suicide.
A day before the suicide, Mr Luikham was visited by three persons sent by the husband of the officer who had levelled sexual harassment charges against him. Mr Luikham told his lawyer that evening that the visitors threatened his life if he continued his trade against the mining mafia. “We have to kill you somehow”, is what they told him. The lawyer advised him to proceed to Delhi and he could deal with the threats on his return.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT CHARGES
It is learnt that the woman officer – belonging to Meghalaya Forest Service – had claimed in a petition filed in Meghalaya High Court that she had been transferred out to Forest Resource Survey Division on February 6 this year because she had complained to PCCF about the sexual harassment. She claimed this post was not safe for her and she feared for her personal safety. She had also filed an FIR with the police in this regard.
But, she was transferred back as DFO, Khasi Autonomous Hill Division on February 27th, the complaint became infractuous and dismissed by the High Court on Match 1, 2024. The court order, however, directed the state forest authorities to expeditiously conduct an inquiry into her allegations by the Internal Complaints Committee of the department.
REPUTATION TARGETTED
Mr Luikham felt that his reputation was being deliberately tarnished at the behest of the mining mafia. That is why he chose to end his life by hanging on March 12.
IFS Association’s letter to the chief secretary claimed that the incident had hit the morale of upright officers across the country. The letter has demanded a CBI probe into the circumstances surrounding the officer’s suicide. The incident has raised serious questions that can only be answered through a detailed, impartial inquiry. It has also demanded stringent action for acts of abetment or negligence so that such incidents do not recur in the future.
