RANCHI/KOCHI: A Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) exam topper whose career got caught in a protracted legal tangle and a CBI probe into the fairness of the selection process was found dead with her IRS officer brother and their mother in a govt accommodation in Kerala’s Kochi on Friday, six days after she failed to appear for a court hearing in Ranchi.
Shalini Vijay, assistant director in the Jharkhand social welfare department, was on leave since 2020. She and her brother Manish Vijay, additional commissioner of central excise and customs in Kochi, are suspected to have entered into a suicide pact along with their mother Shakuntala.
The matriarch’s body was found covered in a white cloth with petals sprinkled all over, leading investigators to presume she died before the siblings purportedly took their lives in separate rooms of Manish’s official quarters at Eechamukk in Kochi’s Kakkanad neighbourhood.
Investigators aren’t ruling out the possibility of Shakuntala dying of any natural cause before her son and daughter hanged themselves. “We will know the details for sure, including the time of death, only after the autopsies,” said assistant CP (Thrikkakara) P V Baby.
Manish’s colleagues were the first to find the bodies when they visited the house to check on him as he was supposed to resume work the previous day after a period of leave but was incommunicado.
Police found a note in Manish’ diary, dated Feb 15, with an instruction to hand over some documents to his younger sister, who is currently in Dubai. The note mentions her phone number. “She will be arriving soon after the autopsies, which most likely will be done on Saturday,” a police officer said.
Shalini was the topper among 64 civil servants recruited through JPSC’s first combined exam in 2003.
Some candidates who didn’t make the cut challenged the recruitment process soon after, pointing out that many of those who cleared the exam were linked to politicians or officials. As the state probe dragged on, Jharkhand HC had the case transferred to CBI in 2022.
CBI filed charges against Shalini and the other recruits under sections 420 (cheating), 423 (fraudulent documentation) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the IPC, among other offences, along with 13(2) and 13(1)(D) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The next hearing is scheduled for Feb 27.
The Vijay family lived in a rented house in Ranchi until 2013. Shalini’s mother used to be a college professor in Bokaro.