Chandigarh: On 8 March, 2025, a senior IAS officer sat down with a file at the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) in Panchkula and wrote out a rule: deposits above Rs 100 crore could not go to a single bank.
Not more than half the board’s funds could go to one bank, wrote Pardeep Kumar, then the member secretary of the board. And IDFC First Bank, he added, was newly empanelled; not more than Rs 50 crore could be placed there.
Then he recommended exactly Rs 50 crore for IDFC First Bank. HSPCB Chairman Vineet Garg approved the note the same day.
Seven months later, on a similar file, Kumar quoted the same finance department circular of 12 July 2024, writing down the Rs 100-crore and 50 percent limit, but the Rs 50-crore clause for a newly empanelled bank was missing.
The Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) supplementary chargesheet, filed on 2 September, calls this “selective use of the circular and not an oversight”. It argues that a man who had written the clause down in March could not have forgotten it in October. By then, IDFC First Bank held more than Rs 105 crore of the board’s money. It would eventually go up to Rs 163.68 crore, more than three times its ceiling.
Kumar is accused number 26 in the chargesheet. CBI says he prepared the comparative rate chart in every investment cycle. He allegedly recommended placement after placement with a bank whose limit he had recorded himself.
Pardeep Kumar, however, denies personal wrongdoing. In his anticipatory bail plea, he said the excess deposits came on the chairman’s oral directions. But CBI says it was his charts and notings that made them possible.
The officer and his desk
A 2011-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Haryana cadre, Kumar was promoted from the state civil services. Government records give his date of birth as 6 June, 1966. He was Member Secretary of HSPCB from 31 August, 2022 to 10 December, 2025, according to reports on his bail plea. The chargesheet lists his last posting as director, state transport.
The member secretary is the board’s second-ranking officer, just behind the chairman. The post carried a job that is of significance in this case: The member secretary handled the board’s fixed deposits.
This is how it worked. The accounts staff noted which deposits were about to mature. They sought the member secretary’s approval to invite quotations. Banks sent sealed rates, addressed to him. He compared them in a chart and recommended where the money should go. The chairman gave the final order.
For most of this period, the chairman was Vineet Garg, a 1991-batch IAS officer, who took charge on 2 December, 2024. The chargesheet names him as accused number 27. A separate report by ThePrint looks at his role.
The case so far
The case is about siphoning off Rs 645 crore from the accounts of eight Haryana and two Chandigarh administration departments by the officials of IDFC First Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, and officials of the Haryana government. As many as 37 people, including three IAS officers, are mentioned in the chargesheet submitted by the CBI before the Special CBI Court at Panchkula.
The case began with a mismatch. In February this year, a committee of the Haryana Development and Panchayats Department looked into discrepancies in an IDFC First Bank account. Its report, quoted in the chargesheet, found account statements that looked forged. It found a cheque for Rs 2.5 crore in figures and Rs 25 crore in words, which the bank had honoured. It recommended a police investigation.
The State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, Panchkula, registered First Information Report 4/2026 on 22 February. After notifications from the Haryana government on 25 March and the Centre on 8 April, the case went to the CBI.
For Kumar and five other IAS officers, the CBI sought and got previous approval under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act before investigating their roles. Kumar was the third IAS officer arrested in the case, after Ram Kumar Singh and Pankaj Aggarwal.
The HSPCB is one limb of the fraud. The CBI puts the loss to the board at about Rs 169 crore, the highest for any single department.
What changed after December 2024
The chargesheet draws a line at the date Garg took over. For about four months before it, IDFC First Bank had tried to win the board’s deposits. Its quotations went through its government banking group. The CBI says those rates were genuine. The bank lost every time. Not one board deposit went to it.
From February 2025, the quotations began to arrive from the Sector 32 branch in Chandigarh. The first, dated 24 February, was signed by Abhay Kumar, the relationship manager, and offered 8.25 percent. The bank told the CBI that no such rate was on offer then. The CBI has named Abhay Kumar and the branch manager, Ribhav Rishi, as accused numbers 2 and 1.
The chargesheet also lists changes in the way the board worked. Chart-making moved from the e-office system to a physical file. The chairman directed that each comparative chart must begin on a fresh page of the notesheet. The CBI relies on a statement by Kapil, the personal assistant to the member secretary. He told investigators this was done so that whole notesheets could be replaced.
His statement also describes how Pradeep Kumar worked. Before signing a notesheet, he carried it to the chairman’s office for discussion. Changes the chairman wanted were put in by Kapil. Kumar then signed. The chairman approved it with two words: “as proposed”.
Six placements
The case against Kumar rests on six placements of board money with IDFC First Bank between March 2025 and January 2026. The CBI counts a cumulative Rs 209.42 crore against a ceiling of Rs 50 crore.
● First, Rs 50 crore on 8 March, 2025. Deposits of about Rs 143.87 crore had matured. Kumar prepared the chart. It put IDFC First Bank at the top, at 8.2 percent for deposits above Rs 5 crore and 8.25 percent above Rs 25 crore. His note, described above, recommended Rs 50 crore for the bank, Rs 71.93 crore for HARCO Bank and Rs 21.94 crore for Sarva Haryana Gramin Bank.
The chargesheet says this note shows Kumar knew the cap from the first day. If he had not, it argues, he would have proposed more for the bank offering the highest rate.
The money went into a Sector 32 savings account, number 10219084990. The CBI says it was opened without approval from the finance department or the chairman. It says the account-opening form carried a photograph and an email ID that investigators trace to the bankers. The first lot of cheque books issued for it, 400 leaves, was taken by Abhay Kumar and never reached the board, according to the chargesheet.
There is also a gap before this placement. On 21 February, Kumar recommended reinvesting only two of four maturing deposits. He left out two HARCO Bank deposits worth about Rs 140.87 crore. They had matured on 22 and 26 February. The file went to the chairman, who decided it on 4 March. The chargesheet says no reason was recorded, and that IDFC First Bank had sent no quotation that round. It counts the lost interest as part of the wrongful loss.
● Second, Rs 17.9 crore on 27 March, 2025. By now, the bank’s Rs 50-crore limit was used up. An internal note of 18 March had kept five other banks out of the round because their limits were over. It did not list IDFC First Bank among them. The invitation of 19 March went straight to Abhay Kumar’s email.
Jana Small Finance Bank, which had not been invited at all, sent a quotation of 8.45 per cent for deposits above Rs 3 crore. In the chart Kumar prepared, the entry against Jana read 8.25 percent for deposits below Rs 3 crore. The CBI says this brought Jana’s rate down below IDFC First Bank’s. If the rate had been entered correctly, it says, Jana would have been the highest and IDFC First Bank would not have come into the picture.
Kumar recommended Rs 11.41 crore, plus Rs 6.49 crore of the Environment Compensation Fund, for IDFC First Bank. Garg approved it on 27 March.
The CBI also quotes a WhatsApp message of 25 March from the board’s data entry operator, Saurav Sharma, to Abhay Kumar. The file had gone up to the PA, he wrote, and the PA was asking whether IDFC could still be given a deposit, since its limit was over.
● Third, Rs 37.78 crore on 2 July, 2025. IDFC First Bank’s quotation of 25 June carried no authorised signature. The CBI says that on the face of it, its genuineness was in doubt.
The chargesheet adds a detail. The invitation email had gone to Abhay Kumar’s old address. He had left the bank on 10 June and the account was deactivated the next day. The email could not have reached him, yet the bank sent a quotation. The CBI reads this as proof that the board’s staff were in touch with bankers outside the email chain.
IndusInd Bank had quoted the same rate, 7.10 per cent. The board’s guidelines say that when two banks offer an equal rate, the money should be split equally. Kumar recommended Rs 37.78 crore for IDFC First Bank and Rs 33.23 crore for IndusInd. The note did not mention the Finance Department’s limits. IDFC First Bank’s total with the board stood at Rs 105.68 crore after this.
● Fourth, Rs 8 crore on 1 October, 2025. The board’s surplus went into an IDFC First Bank savings account at 7.25 percent. No bank was asked for a savings rate. The offer came on a single unstamped letter of 29 September. The highest fixed deposit rate quoted in the same round was 7.02 percent. The chargesheet says no bank pays more on a savings account than on a term deposit.
This is the note, the CBI says, where Kumar left out the Rs 50-crore clause.
● Fifth, Rs 50 crore on 24 October, 2025. Kumar’s chart recommended Rs 25 crore each for IDFC First Bank, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, Bandhan Bank and IndusInd Bank, and the rest for HARCO Bank. IDFC First Bank’s letter of 15 October reached the board a week after the closing date of 8 October. It had no stamp and no named signatory. The CBI says Kumar put it in his chart without a question.
The chargesheet says Garg then struck out the Rs 25 crore meant for IndusInd Bank and gave it to IDFC First Bank, taking its total to Rs 163.68 crore. Bandhan Bank’s higher rate of 7.30 per cent stood recorded on the same notesheet, against IDFC First Bank’s 7.25. The CBI says Kumar recorded no objection.
● Sixth, Rs 45.74 crore on 22 January, 2026. By then Kumar had left the board. The chargesheet itself says new Member Secretary Yogesh Kumar prepared the chart. Garg’s order gave Rs 45.74 crore to IDFC First Bank at 7.40 percent and Rs 18.46 crore to Jana Bank at 7.45 percent.
The CBI’s summary of Kumar’s role speaks of six cycles through January 2026. The detailed account of his acts covers the cycles up to October 2025.
The agency says seven fixed deposit receipts held by the board, with a principal of Rs 201.42 crore, do not appear in IDFC First Bank’s records at all.
Also Read: A ‘seen’ file noting did in Haryana IAS officer. Tried to bury IDFC scam before raising alarm—CBI
The charges
CBI further says IAS Pradeep Kumar was part of a criminal conspiracy with Abhay Kumar, Ribhav Rishi, Manish Jindal, Garg, and the board’s accounts staff, Parveen Kumar and Saurav Sharma. It says the object was the dishonest misappropriation of the board’s funds.
The acts it lists are criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery of a valuable security, forgery for the purpose of cheating, use of forged documents as genuine, destruction of documents needed as evidence, and the taking and giving of undue advantage. It says the comparative chart was a document the officer knew would be needed as evidence, and that he caused it to be drawn so as to make away with the true quotation on record.
The sections invoked are 61(2), 241, 316(5), 317(4), 318(4), 336(3), 338, 340(2) and 344 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and 7(c), 7A, 8, 9, 10 and 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The substantive offences include Sections 12 and 13(2).
The wrongful loss to the board, as the chargesheet puts it for Pradeep Kumar, is Rs 1,59,85,95,089. It includes Rs 43,80,962 as lost interest. The rest is the principal placed beyond the limit, plus the Rs 8 crore in the savings account. The CBI’s public statements have put the board’s loss at about Rs 169 crore.
Pardeep Kumar’s side of the story
Kumar has not been tried. His version is on record in his anticipatory bail plea, filed in the Special CBI Court in Panchkula on 26 June.
He said he followed the finance department’s guidelines. His note of 8 March, according to him, proposed Rs 50 crore for IDFC First Bank, within the cap for newly empanelled banks. Later, larger deposits went there on the oral directions of the chairman. He also says the Sector 32 account was opened on the chairman’s directions, and that big sums kept going to it although other banks were available in Panchkula, where the board is based.
He told the court that files and communications were handled through the board’s e-file system. The CBI’s chargesheet says chart work was moved out of that system to a paper file.
Sources familiar with the investigation said Kumar told CBI officers in custody that he acted on the Chairman’s directions.
The CBI’s case is that Kumar still prepared the charts, still recommended the bank and raised no objection as the limits were passed.
Arrest on the last day of service
By the end of June, Kumar was the third IAS officer the CBI was closing in on. The Haryana government had suspended him on 8 April. CBI sources said he was missing from his home and his phone was switched off. His lawyers had by then moved the court for anticipatory bail, with a hearing fixed for 2 July.
Tuesday, 30 June, was the date of his superannuation. At 6.25 pm, the CBI arrested him. The chargesheet records the time. That night he was produced before the special court, and the CBI got two days of custody. On 2 July, he was sent to judicial custody, where he remains. His bail plea became infructuous.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)