A 25-year-old IAS aspirant has been arrested for posing as a bureaucrat to extort money from government servants after threatening them of initiating a false black money probe against them.
The accused, identified as Shiv Shankar, a resident of Aligarh, UP was arrested on Saturday from University metro station here for posing as secretary to the Minister of State for Home and a high-ranking IB official to dupe people, police said.
Shankar has a Ph.D from RML University, Faizabad and had appeared in a number of competitive exams including UPSC, IB, CDS, SSC among others.
He wanted to open his own IAS academy and was looking to arrange money for that. He even married a girl convincing her parents that he was an intelligence officer, police said.
The impersonator came under police net after they received a complaint from the office of OSD to MoS, Home enclosing a complaint of one Puran Singh, retired officer from Election Commission, that he had received several threat calls in late October from the accused.
“The accused told Singh that enquiries are being conducted against him for alleged black money procured during his government service and asked him to meet at gate no 3, North Block here so as to settle the matter. On this, Singh contacted office of MHA and forwarded his complaint,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.
On further verification by office of Minister of State (Home), it was found that neither such officer nor the numbers mentioned in the complaint belongs to their office, hence, the complaint was forwarded to Crime Branch for taking legal action into the matter.
During interrogation, Shankar confessed his crime and disclosed that he used to impersonate as an IB officer (MHA) and also as an APS to Minister of State (Home) to call the complainants to extort money from them, police said, adding that two mobile phones were recovered from his possession.
“Some documents used by the accused to represent himself as an IB officer have also been recovered from possession of the accused. The SIM cards used by accused in offence could not be recovered and he has disclosed that he had destroyed those cards. Accordingly Section 201 IPC has also been added in the case,” Yadav said.
On further interrogation, the accused revealed that he has also worked with several NGOs in education field and was looking to open his own IAS Academy and needed money for it.
“So he started blackmailing and threatening people to earn easy and quick money. He impersonated as a higher rank IB officer posted in MHA in general public and even got married by posing himself as an IB officer to his in-laws,” he said.
Further investigation is underway and other victims of the accused are being traced.