Chandigarh: On 24 December 2025, Chandigarh’s roads were choked. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was in town, and traffic around Tribune Chowk crawled.
At Hotel Novotel, a woman sat in the lobby waiting.
She had come in a red Dzire from Zirakpur, given her ID at the reception and gone up to a room booked in the name of Naresh Kumar. When she met Naresh, he told her she had been called to meet a man called Pankaj Agarwal, who hadn’t reached. She spent about an hour with Naresh, then came down and sat in the lobby.
Agarwal, a 2000-batch IAS officer, was held up by the traffic. According to the CBI charge sheet, she saw him enter the hotel. But she “had other arrangements” and left. The meeting, says the charge sheet, did not happen.
The woman is W-3 in the charge sheet, along with two other women—W-1 and W-2, none of them named. All this is in the CBI’s supplementary charge sheet, filed on 2 September 2026 before the Special Judge, CBI, Panchkula.
This is the Rs 645-crore fraud case where public money parked by government bodies with IDFC First Bank was allegedly siphoned off through fraudulent debits.
The CBI’s case rests not only on proving the alleged diversion of government funds, but also on what it says happened to some of that money after it was siphoned off. In its 2 September supplementary chargesheet, the CBI alleges that part of the proceeds was used to provide “illegal gratification” to Pankaj Agarwal in return for facilitating opening and operation of bank account of amount above limit.
The supplementary charge sheet in the IDFC First Bank fraud case covers eight Haryana organisations. Three names recur in the account that follows. Ribhav Rishi, allegedly the main architect of the fraud, was manager at IDFC First Bank, Sector 32, Chandigarh.
CBI says he paid for favours from officials, mostly in cash. Abhay Kumar, another banker, and Rishi’s junior, and Naresh Kumar, a former superintendent of the Development and Panchayat Department are described as his associates, who relayed instructions and booked rooms, cars and arranged women for “sexual favours”.
Pankaj Agarwal is one of the IAS officers CBI says Rishi cultivated. All four, Rishi, Abhay, Naresh and Agarwal have been named in the CBI charge sheet as accused.
CBI says Agarwal, then Commissioner and Secretary, School Education, Haryana (later became Principal Secretary, Agriculture), facilitated the opening and operation of a bank account in the IDFC First Bank for the Haryana School Shiksha Pariyojna Parishad and of pushing through a Rs 100-crore proposal despite a Rs 50-crore ceiling. He is accused of receiving undue advantage from the proceeds of the alleged fraud.
CBI puts the net loss to the Parishad at Rs 50.54 crore, from 101 fraudulent debits.
The three witnesses, W-1, W-2 and W-3, come into the IDFC First Bank fraud case charge sheet under a different heading: “Illegal gratification”.
CBI says Rishi paid for Agarwal’s favour in kind (arrangement of dance parties, sexual favours and hotel stay).
The CBI lists four locations for the “illegal gratification”: Dance parties at a farmhouse called Jade Manor in Zirakpur arranged by W-1 on nine dates from from 25 July 2025 to 16 January 2026; stay/party at Novotel on 24 December 2025 arranged by W-3; and stay/party at Hotel Wyndham in Mohali on 10 January 2026 arranged by W-2. Besides these, a stay of two nights was arranged at a Delhi hotel.
According to the CBI, Rishi paid for all this out of the proceeds of the crime. However, the agency is yet to prove it in court.
W-1: the woman who booked the farmhouse
W-1 is described as a friend of Rishi. By her own account to the CBI, she did a “job” for him from July 2025 to January 2026.
She booked Jade Manor in her name on nine dates. She paid in cash, from money Rishi gave her. She arranged dancers who came from Delhi. According to the charge sheet, seven or eight women were brought for each party.
CBI says Rishi, Abhay Kumar, Naresh Kumar and others attended. It says Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh in small notes was showered on the dancers at each party.
The hotel’s booking records match W-1’s statement. The farmhouse’s then manager, Gautam Chopra, told CBI that Rishi would call him about availability. Then W-1 would turn up, pay cash and have the booking recorded in her name.
Her statement is the one that brings Agarwal into the room. She told CBI that during calls with Rishi on WhatsApp, Rishi would add Agarwal to the call. On those calls, she said, Agarwal asked for parties at Jade Manor, asked about particular dance groups, asked for notes to shower and asked for “room service” by foreign artists. At the parties, she said, he asked when the next one would be.
She described two evenings in particular.
On 1 November 2025, she told CBI, she booked the venue on Rishi’s instructions. Rishi introduced a man to her as Pankaj Agarwal, a senior Haryana government officer. She said he called her aside and asked her to send girls to his room.
On 9 November 2025, she said, she was standing alone on the party floor, with Rishi nearby. Agarwal came up to her, gestured towards a room and asked her to go inside with him. She refused. Rishi stepped in and said she was his friend and Agarwal could engage another girl.
She told CBI she felt insulted, ashamed and humiliated. She said she told Agarwal she did not do “such work”.
CBI says four of the parties, on 1 November, 9 November, 13 December and 16 January, were organised at Agarwal’s demand and he attended them. It places his phone at Jade Manor on those nights, using call records and internet-use records from Vodafone.
W-3: Jade Manor, then Novotel
W-3 told CBI that on the instructions of a man called Kabir, she went to two parties at Jade Manor, one in November 2025 and one in December.
She said that on both occasions, while she was in a room on the ground floor, Agarwal came inside and stayed for some time. She was paid around Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 each time. She was dropped at the farmhouse by a man called Rakesh Kumar, who is known as “Chacha”, and she stayed at his place in Zirakpur. Rakesh Kumar has testified to this to the CBI.
CBI backs it with her phone’s location. It puts her at Jade Manor from the evening of 1 November to the morning of 2 November, and from the night of 13 December to the morning of 14 December. Both dates match two of the four parties the CBI says Agarwal attended.
Gautam Chopra told CBI that Rishi demanded W-3 be sent to Jade Manor, and that “Chacha” was paid Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 each time for dropping her.
The Novotel evening is from where CBI has WhatsApp messages. At 1.43 pm on 24 December, Naresh Kumar wrote to Abhay Kumar, “usi ko bula do” (send the same one). He added, “boss ka man bhi hai us mein” (the boss is also keen on her). He asked that she be told to come to Novotel at 4.30 pm. Abhay Kumar said “Done”.
CBI reads “boss” as Agarwal. It points to his phone’s location at Novotel from 9.43 pm to 10.11 pm, and to a call from Naresh to him at 10.11 pm.
Abhay Kumar then phoned Gautam Chopra, who spoke to Kabir, who spoke to “Chacha”. CBI lists dozens of calls between them through the evening. The next day, Abhay Kumar sent Rs 40,000 by UPI to Chopra. CBI treats that as payment for W-3’s arrangement.
The charge sheet says W-3’s meeting with Agarwal did not take place that day.
W-2: The flight from Delhi
W-2 comes into the IDFC fraud story two weeks later. CBI says her case follows the same pattern.
On 9 January 2026, Naresh Kumar asked a man named Varun Malhotra to arrange a woman in Chandigarh for the night. Varun contacted W-2, who agreed to come from Delhi. He booked her a flight. She missed it, and took a taxi instead. A room was booked for her at Novotel in Naresh’s name. CBI says her phone was at Novotel at 2.58 am on 10 January. The meeting was pushed to the next night.
On the evening of 10 January, W-2 went to Hotel Wyndham in Mohali. A suite was booked in the names of Naresh Kumar and W-2 through MakeMyTrip. She showed her ID at the reception. According to the charge sheet, Naresh and Agarwal came to the suite and “spent time with W-2 that night”.
The IDFC bank fraud charge sheet quotes a WhatsApp message from Naresh Kumar to Abhay Kumar at 10.51 pm: “Pankaj sir saath hain” (Pankaj sir is with us). At 10.56 pm, Uber records show Agarwal taking a ride from Wyndham to his home in Sector 19, Chandigarh. He reached at 11.11 pm. Varun picked up W-2 late that night. She flew back to Delhi the next morning.
Her payment was Rs 75,000 in cash, which Varun paid out of money Rishi gave him. CBI treats this as another instance of gratification paid for by Rishi.
What CBI says it adds up to
CBI describes the whole spending as met “almost wholly in cash”. It names Rahul, who worked for Rishi, as collecting Rs 3 lakh to Rs 4 lakh in small notes for each party from one Harbhajan, working with the Reserve Bank of India in Chandigarh. It says liquor came from a shop in Sector 17. The two traceable payments, it says, are a catering cheque of Rs 1 lakh for 9 November and the Rs 40,000 UPI payment.
It adds that the cash came from the government money siphoned off from the IDFC bank, and then converted into gold and back.
The charge sheet invokes Section 79 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which deals with insulting the modesty of a woman, against Pankaj Agarwal. The specific act is the charge that he entered W-3’s room at Jade Manor, on two occasions, intending to insult her modesty. It also says Agarwal is liable under Sections 7(c), 12 and 13(2) read with 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act for taking undue advantage.
Agarwal’s lawyer, Vishal Garg, had told ThePrint in September that the allegations were baseless and his client was innocent. He had also said no recovery was made from Agarwal during the searches at his residence.
The sanction needed to prosecute him under Section 19 of the PC Act is awaited. CBI says the investigation into the alleged IDFC fraud remains open.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)