A senior judicial official of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality committed suicide on Saturday while he was under detention on suspicion of taking heavy bribes, Xinhuanet.com reported Sunday.

Wu Xiaoqing, former director of the Chongqing higher people's court's enforcement bureau and dean of Chongqing Judges College, was found dead by hanging in a local detention facility, Xinhuanet.com reported Sunday, citing a statement from the Chongqing Municipal Government's information office.

The statement said that Wu left a suicide note at around 12:31pm Saturday and then hanged himself on the door of a detention room while the other inmates were napping, noting that Wu took care to evade the surveillance camera. Wu's suicide was reported to the police by other inmates at about 13:12pm.

Previous investigation showed that Wu took in a total of more than 3.5 million yuan (about 513,000 U.S. dollars) and 100,000 HK dollars in bribes. In addition, he failed to account for another 5 million yuan that he owned.

His graft case, being prosecuted since early June, has already entered into the review stage as of November 1st.

Two police officers who were on duty on Saturday were under isolate investigation, according to the report.