• Source:JND
Add as a preferred

Assam Home Secretary:  A senior IPS officer, who was serving as the Home Secretary in the Assam government shot and killed himself in a Guwahati hospital's ICU, minutes after his ailing wife died of cancer on Tuesday. Shiladitya Chetia, an Indian Police Service officer of the 2009 batch, allegedly shot himself to death with his service revolver in the same ICU room where her wife was admitted. Shiladitya's wife Agomoni Barbaruah was battling with stage-4 cancer, taking treatment from a private hospital in Guwahati. He has been attending her for the last four months and has been on leave since.

A 44-year-old officer, Chetia, had served Assam's Sonitpur and Tinsukia districts as Superintendent of Police (SP) and headed the 4th battalion of Assam Police before being posted as the Home and Political Government Secretary of the state.

According to officials, Mrs Barbaruah was declared dead by the doctors in the afternoon on Tuesday. Minutes after Chetia pulled his gun and shot himself to death in the same ICU of the Nemcare Hospital of Guwahati.

The DG rank officer was staying with his wife at the same hospital for close to two months, the MD of the hospital told the Indian Express.

"She had been battling for around two years and had received treatment elsewhere as well. For the last two months, she had been receiving conservative treatment here and he had taken up a separate room in the hospital,” he said as quoted by the Indian Express.

The official confirmation of IPS Shiladitya Chetia's death was shared on X by the state police DGP GP Singh.

"In an unfortunate turn of events, Sri Shiladitya Chetia IPS 2009 RR, Secretary Home & Political Government of Assam, took his own life this evening, a few minutes after the attending physician declared the death of his wife who was battling cancer for a long time," the police chief wrote in an X post.

"The entire Assam Police family is in deep grief," he said in a post on X.

"Shiladitya Chetia was mentally down due to his wife's ill health for the last few days and the unfortunate incident happened today. He was staying at the hospital and looking after his wife," a police official told news agency IANS.