I think I have found a solution
For the sake of others who might be interested:
I use the ctypes module in the standard python distribution to access user32.dll on windows and call the setFocus method on the pandaWindow:
from ctypes import windll
user32dllHandle = windll.user32
pandaWindowHandle = user32dllHandle.GetWindow(parentWindow.GetHandle(), 5)
#the second parameter stands for the constant GW_HWNDPREV in windows.h
#the value of this parameter might depend on the order in which the #children are added to the parent of pandaWindow, assuming the
#parent might contain other windows beside pandaWindow
#finally when the parent gets focus I call this
user32dllHandle.SetFocus(pandaWindowHandle)
this way I can avoid any restrictions on the panda library used by the end user and everything works fine
However, there can be some unwanted implications of this forced call.
I will surely like to hear from someone with expertise in this field
Regards
Shashank