Gurugram: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has moved to formally question eight IAS officers and one Indian Forest Service officer in connection with Haryana’s Rs 645-crore IDFC bank fraud where public funds were siphoned.
The scam surfaced in February when a routine attempt to close a government account revealed massive discrepancies at the Sector 32 branch of IDFC First Bank in Chandigarh.
The Haryana government has granted the CBI sanction under Section 17-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act to question five IAS officers: Vineet Garg (1991 batch), Pankaj Agarwal (2000 batch), Mohammed Shayin (2002 batch), Pradeep Kumar (2011 batch) and Ram Kumar Singh (2012 batch). The last two, both promoted from the Haryana Civil Services, have been under suspension since 9 April.
On Friday, the CBI moved a fresh application, seeking sanction to question three more IAS officers: Saket Kumar (2005 batch), D.K. Behera (2007 batch) and Mani Ram (2009 batch).
The Print has reached these IAS officers for comment via WhatsApp messages. This report will be updated if and when they respond.
The central government has separately cleared Navneet Kumar Srivastava, an IFS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories cadre (2014 batch), who was serving as CEO of the Chandigarh Renewable Energy and Science and Technology Promotion Society (CREST), at the time that the fraud occurred. CREST was among the bodies that lost public money in the scam.
A senior Haryana government officer confirmed these developments to ThePrint.
He said that the CBI had moved its application based on what it collected from the disclosure statements of the accused under its custody. “The central agency needs their (all the eight IAS officers’) response to certain material it has in those disclosure statements,” he added.
Section 17-A, which was inserted into the Prevention of Corruption Act by an amendment in 2018, requires any investigation agency to obtain prior sanction from the competent authority—the state government in the case of state officers, and the central government for central officers—before conducting any inquiry or investigation into offences alleged to have been committed by a public servant in the discharge of official duties. Without this sanction, the CBI cannot formally question the officers or record their statements as part of its investigation.
The CBI also conducted searches at seven locations in Chandigarh and Panchkula on the evening of 14 May, covering the residences of the accused, jewellers’ showrooms, premises of alleged beneficiaries, and other private establishments connected to the probe. The agency said that it recovered documents, financial records, and digital evidence during the searches.
Officers transferred from key posts
The Haryana government has transferred all five IAS officers out of the portfolios they held at the time of the scam.
Saket Kumar, additional principal secretary to the chief minister with charge of development, panchayats, cooperation, and Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited (HPGCL), has been relieved of all responsibilities.
Pankaj Agarwal, former principal secretary of irrigation and mining, has been moved to the Architecture department. Vineet Garg, who chaired the Haryana State Pollution Control Board, one of the departments whose funds were siphoned, has been shifted to the printing and stationery department.
Mohammed Shayin retains only housing after being relieved of public health and finance duties. D.K. Behera, on the other hand, was transferred out from the Governor’s secretariat and assigned to revenue and disaster management.
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The fraud: How it was structured
The scam came to light in February when an official in the development and panchayats department sought to close a government account and found massive discrepancies between departmental records and the actual balance.
IDFC First Bank disclosed the unauthorised transactions to stock exchanges, admitted its employees had acted in collusion with outsiders, and returned Rs 578 crore, principal and interest, to the Haryana government.
The state then handed the investigation over to the CBI.
The Enforcement Directorate, running a parallel probe under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, subsequently told a special PMLA court in Panchkula that the total fraud amounted to Rs 645.59 crore—larger than the figure initially made public, and that funds of two private schools in Panchkula had also been siphoned, in addition to those of Haryana government departments and Chandigarh civic bodies.
Investigators have identified Ribhav Rishi, former manager of the IDFC First Bank Sector 32 branch, as the central figure in the fraud. Working at the branch from April 2023 to August 2025, Rishi floated three shell firms in the names of his personal assistant, his driver’s wife, his mother, and a chartered accountant. Government funds that should have been placed in fixed deposit receipts were never invested; departments were shown forged FDR documents while the actual money was routed through the shell firms to jewellers, from whom equivalent cash was collected and distributed.
Working a parallel operation at the same branch was relationship manager Abhay Kumar, whose wife’s firm, Swastik Desh Projects, received Rs 203.50 crore from multiple departments, including the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (Rs 70.26 crore), Panchkula Municipal Corporation (Rs 38.47 crore) and the Haryana School Shiksha Pariyojna Parishad (Rs 27.46 crore).
The Haryana State Pollution Control Board was the single largest loser, at Rs 169.27 crore. CREST lost Rs 82.02 crore; Panchkula Municipal Corporation Rs 80 crore; Chandigarh Municipal Corporation Rs 73.50 crore; HSSPP Rs 53.86 crore; HPGCL Rs 50 crore; and Haryana Labour Welfare Board Rs 50 crore.
Fifteen people have been arrested so far, including government officials. Three accounts officers have been dismissed from service. An account officer who received a CBI notice to appear for questioning died after jumping from the 8th floor of the Haryana Civil Secretariat.
A separate but connected fraud of Rs 116.84 crore was detected in the accounts of Chandigarh Smart City Limited, involving Rishi again and Forged Fixed Deposit Receipt (FDR) documents. It came to light only after an employee common to both cases stopped reporting for work following the exposure of the Haryana scam.
The question investigators are pursuing
The central question in the investigation is why government departments headquartered in Panchkula opened accounts at specific Chandigarh branches of IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, in violation of norms requiring accounts to be opened at the nearest branch.
Investigators have been probing whether a network of private operators directed public funds towards these specific branches.
Audio and digital recordings recovered during the investigation reportedly contain conversations involving senior officials. The CBI is conducting a forensic analysis of these recordings.
The finance department had written to all department heads on 7 July 2025, months before the fraud became public, flagging non-compliance with account-opening guidelines and specifically calling out Panchkula offices for opening accounts in Chandigarh without valid justification.
Departments were asked to audit all accounts within 15 days and submit compliance reports by July 30, 2025. Whether those audits were conducted has not been confirmed publicly.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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