The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Family, friends of IFS officer shocked

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Tuesday, Jul 08, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Family, friends of IFS officer shocked

Staff Reporter

Vadepalli Venkateswara Rao was student of HCU in mid-80s

Photo: S. Rambabu

Family reunion: IFS officer V. Venkateswara Rao with his family during one of his visits to his native place. –

HYDERABAD: Death came calling for 44-year-old Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer Vadepalli Venkateswara Rao in a suicide bomb attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday.

Rao and India’s Defence Attaché Brigadier Mehta were among several persons killed in the incident.

After completing three years tenure in the Embassy, he was supposed to return to India within 25 days, but as fate would have it, his life was cut short abruptly, said an IAS officer, close to Rao’s family.

Recalling his association with Rao, a college teacher said: “His life ambition was to become an IFS officer and he had achieved it.”

“It’s still a shock for us….” said another colleague of his, over phone from New Delhi. He said preliminary enquiries revealed that Rao, a 1990 batch IFS officer, was coming to the Embassy in a car along with Mehta when the attack took place. He was a press counsellor at the Embassy.

A native of Narsipudi village of Alamoor mandal in East Godavari district, Rao also worked at Embassies in Germany, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Washington. His wife Malathi and two children -- Ankhit (12) and Amulya (10) -- are staying in New Delhi, while other family members were staying in the Housing Board Colony in Rajahmundry.

The family came to know about the incident after television channels started flashing news about the bomb blast.

After completing graduation from Silver Jubilee College in Kurnool, Rao had joined the Hyderabad Central University in mid-80s and completed M.A. (political sciences).

He later did M.Phil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

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