New Delhi: In a 2022 preparatory interview for the UPSC exam, Rahul Bansal was asked if he had ever paid a bribe and how he felt about it. The IIT-BHU graduate went on to narrate how upset he felt after he paid Rs 500 to a panchayat secretary for his brother’s birth certificate.
Four years later, Rahul Bansal, now an IPS officer, faces allegations of demanding and accepting Rs 1 crore through hawala channels to settle a cybercrime case in Chhattisgarh’s Surguja district.
Currently posted as the City SP in Ambikapur, the 2022-batch IPS officer has not commented on the allegations. ThePrint reached out to his lawyer Manish Tiwari, and he too refused to comment.
The contrast between Bansal’s remarks in the mock interview and the allegations against him has drawn wide attention as the interview video is widely circulated on social media.
A Delhi court sought Action Taken Reports from the CBI Director and the Chhattisgarh DGP on the complaint. The reports have been submitted.
The case stems from an alleged share market fraud amounting to Rs 21.15 lakh.
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The case
Bansal’s name has come up in a case pertaining to a cybercrime investigation formally launched on 22 July last year when the Surguja police registered an FIR based on the complaint of a local investor, Ravi Moham Goswami.
In his police complaint, Goswami reported a loss of Rs 21.15 lakh through fraudulent online stock investment applications like Money Trade 365 and Skytrade.
The initial FIR was registered under BNS sections 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 317(4) (dealing with stolen property), 111 (organised crime), 238 (causing disappearance of evidence or screening an offender) and 3(5) (acts done by several persons with common intention).
Sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000 were also invoked, including Sections 21(1), 21(2) and 21(3) of the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Act, 2019 (dealing with offences related to unauthorised deposit schemes), against unknown persons.
So far, 23 people have been arrested in this case across states and the police have filed five chargesheets, according to Surguja Range IG Deepak Jha.
As the Cyber Police expanded their probe across multiple states, they began picking up individuals based on “disclosure statements” made by “certain co-accused persons during investigation,” the investigation revealed.
As part of the probe overseen by Bansal, police reached the doorsteps of two men—Garvit Jain (26), a resident of Delhi; and Anshul Ginotra, a resident of Rohtak in Haryana. They have been accused of running operations of platforms dealing in cryptocurrencies.
The two applied for anticipatory bail at a local court in Chhattisgarh, which rejected their pleas last month. The same month, the high court also junked their plea to quash the case probed by Bansal and his team.
Among the 23 arrested is Randhir Shah, a Delhi-based Chartered Accountant.
Sources in the Chhattisgarh Police said Shah’s relative, Akash Kumar approached the CBI with a complaint that the Bansal allegedly hatched a criminal conspiracy with certain other junior police officials, and demanded and accepted a “bribe of more than Rs.1 crore through hawala channel” to settle the case.
Akash Kumar later moved a special CBI court in Delhi seeking registration of a criminal case against Bansal and his subordinates in Chhattisgarh. He submitted before the court that he had initially approached the CBI with the complaint, but there was no response from the agency.
Hearing his plea, the special CBI court on 1 July sought reports from the Chhattisgarh DGP and CBI Director.
“This is fresh application/complaint filed by applicant/complainant Akash Kumar containing allegations that respondent No.2/Rahul Bansal, an officer of Indian Police Service (IPS), hatched a criminal conspiracy with certain other junior police official (respondent No.3 & 4) and acting in furtherance of the said conspiracy, these police officials demanded & accepted bribe of more than Rs.1 crore through hawala channel…” the application said.
Engineer, lawyer and then IPS officer
The plea seeking the registration of a case against Bansal and his subordinates remains pending before the court, even as his comments and background emerge as a focal point.
Bansal, who is originally from Jaipur, did his schooling from the Gyandeep Senior Secondary School. He was also an NCC cadet.
According to LinkedIn profile, he earned his Bachelor of Technology in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University from July 2011 and May 2015, with an 8.14 grade. He was part of the IIT hockey team.
He did his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in 2017 till 2019. He then completed two certificate courses — one in rural development and another in disaster management. Bansal did his Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Rajasthan between 2020 and 2023.
For three months in 2014, he was an intern with Qualcomm, a-US based semiconductor manufacturing company.
He became an associate engineer with the company in 2015. From February 2017 to December 2018, he worked as an income tax inspector with the the Central Board of Direct Taxes, Ministry of Finance, in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal.
In August 2022, he cleared the Union Public Service Examination, securing rank 377. He joined the Indian Police Service (IPS), and was allocated the Chattisgarh cadre.
Bansal ‘paid a bribe’ in his own village, ‘felt bad’
Amid the ongoing controversy, a 1.5-minute clip of Bansal’s mock UPSC interview has gone viral, in which the interviewer asks about his view on the “general perception” that “civil services are very inefficient and very corrupt”.
Bansal told the interviewer, “There are certain persons who are corrupt and inefficient, but the whole civil services cannot be blamed for that.”
When asked if he faced some situation like this, Bansal told the interviewer, he did, while he had to get the birth certificate of his brother to get his passport.
“My brother was in college at IIT Kanpur, so he had to go to the US to present a paper. At that time, to get the passport, he had to get a birth certificate. I had to get his birth certificate,” he said.
Bansal said he went to the Panchayat Secretary, but he did not issue the birth certificate. For seven days, Bansal told the interviewer, he had to go to different places. He said the time was of essence.
“So, I had to pay some bribe to the panchayat secretary, because the time period was very less. And, he was reluctant to prepare that certificate.”
As soon as he paid Rs 500, the panchayat secretary agreed to issue the certificate, he told the interview.
When the interviewer asked him how he felt paying a bribe in his own village, Bansal said, “very bad”. “It is very disappointing that a civil servant, a public servant, is doing such work.”
The interviewer then asked him if he thought police reforms are essential “looking at all these incidents”, Bansal said, “I believe police reforms are essential.”
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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