Gurugram: Dusmanta Kumar Bahera, an IAS officer of 2007 batch, relinquished charge as Director General of the Development and Panchayat Department on October 28, 2025. But nearly Rs 50 crore was siphoned off from the department’s bank account by using his forged signatures after he was gone.
The FIR registered by the Haryana State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau in the Rs 578 crore bank fraud linked to state government accounts puts on record a clear trail of alleged forgery, procedural violations and unauthorised fund movements in two Haryana government accounts opened with IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank under the Mukhya Mantri Grameen Awas Yojna 2.0 (MMGAY-2.0) scheme.
The FIR reads less like a routine banking irregularity complaint and more like a carefully scripted heist, with forged signatures of an officer who had already relinquished charge, cheques where amounts in figures and words don’t match, and transaction alerts routed to a mobile number registered in the name of a government superintendent.
Arshinder Singh Chawla, Director General of Police, Haryana State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), told ThePrint Tuesday that the FIR on the Rs 578 crore bank fraud was registered at the Bureau’s Sector-17 police station in Panchkula late evening on 23 February.
The FIR was filed by Inspector Amit Kumar, posted at the State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, Panchkula, and investigation handed over to DSP Shukar Pal.
Chawla told ThePrint that the FIR registered on Monday on the inquiry conducted by the Development and Panchayat Department into the bank fraud is a only the starting point for the ACB.
“The total amount involved in the fraud is Rs 556 crore and with Rs 22 crore interest, it comes out to be Rs 578 crore. In all, the accounts of eight government departments are involved. This FIR is the starting point for the Bureau. In the course of investigation, we will get to the bottom of the complete fraud by covering all departments,” Chawla said.
In a parallel administrative move, the Government of Haryana has constituted a high-level committee to examine the alleged unauthorised transfer of government funds to IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank and to review the State Bank Policy framework.
According to an order issued by Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi on 24 February 2026, the four-member panel comprises Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) Arun Kumar Gupta, IAS; Director, Development and Panchayats, Anish Yadav, IAS; Municipal Commissioner, Panchkula, Vinay Kumar, IRPS; and Deputy Secretary, Haryana Public Service Commission, Satish Kumar, HCS.
The committee has been tasked with examining the decision-making process that led to the deposits, identifying lapses or systemic failures, fixing accountability if any, and recommending corrective measures. It has been asked to submit its report within a month.
The investigation continues even as Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini informed the Vidhan Sabha Tuesday that the full amount was credited back to government accounts by the banks themselves. He said Rs 556 crore in principal, along with Rs 22 crore in interest, totalling Rs 578 crore, was recovered within just 24 hours.
The FIR accessed by ThePrint names no specific individuals as accused; the accused column reads “unknown officials and public/private persons” of IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, but the details recorded in the FIR point in very specific directions.
What are the sections?
The case has been registered under three sections in all of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 (as amended in 2018), and five sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023.
The Prevention of Corruption Act sections cover criminal misconduct by a public servant as habitually accepting illegal gratification, punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment.
The BNS sections deal with cheating and dishonestly inducing a person to deliver property or alter a document; cheating by personation; forgery of documents used as evidence or for contracts and transactions; use of a forged document as genuine, knowing it to be forged; and criminal conspiracy.
The period of offence recorded in the FIR is 26 September 2025 to 23 February 2026.
What the FIR actually records
The FIR is built substantially on an inquiry report prepared by a three-member committee constituted by the Director of Development and Panchayats Department, Haryana, Chandigarh, on 11 February. The committee was set up even before the matter blew up publicly.
The committee found that two accounts were opened on 26 September 2025—one with IDFC First Bank and one with AU Small Finance Bank, both at their Sector 32 branches in Chandigarh—by the department under the Mukhya Mantri Grameen Awas Yojna 2.0 (MMGAY-2.0) Scheme.
As per the state finance department’s instructions dated 12 July 2024, Rs 50 crore was parked in the IDFC First Bank account and Rs 25 crore in the AU Small Finance Bank account.
The FIR records that no approvals for utilisation of funds from either account were ever issued by any competent authority, and the entire money was meant to simply sit in the accounts.
What happened instead is at the heart of the fraud.
The closure request that unravelled everything
It was the finance department’s request on 13 January 2026, directing the banks to close the accounts and transfer the full amounts to an Axis Bank account that unravelled the fraud.
While AU Small Finance Bank complied, and transferred Rs 25,45,84,863 to Axis Bank and closed the account on 16 January 2026, IDFC First Bank did not. It transferred only Rs 1,27,44,689 to Axis Bank and then proceeded to close the account.
The department recorded its formal disagreement with the bank’s position and began seeking transaction records.
The forged signatures and the mismatched cheque
The FIR records that when the committee checked the records submitted by the bank, they found that multiple cheques along with debit notes were processed by IDFC First Bank for payment transfers.
These cheques, the committee found, bore what seemed to be forged signatures of the then Director General, D. K. Behera, an IAS officer, who had relinquished charge on 28 October 2025.
The committee found that the debit notes attached to the cheques also appeared to contain forged signatures.
The FIR notes that cheque No. 000011 processed by IDFC First Bank mentioned the amount in figures as Rs 2,50,00,000 (two crore fifty lakh), while the amount in words was written “Rupees twenty-five crore”.
Despite this, the bank honoured and processed the cheque, treating the amount in words as the operative figure, and paid out Rs 25 crore. The FIR calls this “an established act of malafide intention”.
The department’s scheme-in-charge categorically told the committee that the department did not use cheques at all for the scheme and operated exclusively through debit notes.
The FIR further records that a total of Rs 46,56,00,000 (forty-six crore fifty-six lakh) was transferred from the IDFC First Bank account to an AU Small Finance Bank account on the basis of these cheques and debit notes.
The Superintendent’s phone number
The bank produced call and SMS logs showing that transaction alerts and confirmations from the IDFC First Bank account were being sent to mobile number 91-9812433350.
The number was found to be registered in the name of Prince, Superintendent, in the Office of the Director, Panchayats. The inquiry committee sought a statement from him regarding the log details of his registered number, which is recorded as an annexure to the inquiry report.
AU Small Finance Bank’s non-cooperation
The FIR records that AU Small Finance Bank was “non-cooperative” and did not provide relevant documents and records to the inquiry committee. The account statement that was obtained, however, showed various transactions made to an entity called “Swastik Desh Projects”, details of which are described in the FIR as “not known”.
The account statements of IDFC First Bank also showed that transactions had been made involving accounts of the Haryana State Pollution Control Board and Municipal Corporation, Panchkula.
The committee said these transactions were “inexplicable”, which raised the possibility that accounts of other government departments and entities may have been similarly compromised.
The FIR explicitly requests that during the course of investigation, bank account statements of other departments of the Government of Haryana mentioned in the documents should also be obtained and scrutinised for any unauthorised transactions.
Forged account statements
The inquiry committee report mentioned in the FIR concluded that the bank had provided forged account statements to mislead the department’s officials.
The committee found that the signatures on the cheques processed by IDFC First Bank did not match the signatory on the account opening form, and that the bank had continued to transact even after receiving the department’s letter dated 10 December 2025, duly acknowledged by the bank on 12 December 2025, seeking a signature update for the new incumbent director.
The inquiry report, signed by three senior department officials on 18 February 2026, concluded that it appeared to be a case of forgery and procedural lapse by officials of both banks and recommended a thorough investigation by state police.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)