Visiting card of an IAS being used by a mountebank to pose as the IAS helped Chamoli police to arrest a person from Karanprayag under section 170 of IPC on Tuesday, something that must caution the people holding importance against casually exchanging visiting cards. The accused has been identified as Roshan lal Bansal, a businessman from Delhi. While being interrogated, he said he had used the name Purushottam Das while posing as the IAS. He further confessed to have claimed being posted at the President’s secretariat in Delhi. Car driver Prem Kumar was also arrested under the same section.
Police while launching a vehicle checking drive in Karanprayag asked the driver of the vehicle using beacon to stop for checking. The person sitting in the car scolded police for their audacity in stopping a car of an IAS officer. When police sought his identity card he showed a visiting card bearing the name of Purushottam Das. Police grew suspicious and made a call on the number written on the visiting card. Purushottam Das picked up the call and said he was in Delhi. Things became clear to the police that the person posing as an IAS officer identifying himself as Purushottam Das was a charlatan, said SP Chamoli Priti Priyadarshini Meena. He further said that when police questioned him he confessed that his real name Roshan lal Bansal. “ He said he had met Purushottam Das once in Delhi and somehow procured his visiting card. It is however yet to be clear when he had procured Das’s visiting card and the time he had been using it for his personal benefit. The accused is being further interrogated. We would soon get all the details about him,” Meena said.
Police sources said that he has been in Uttarakhand for the past one week, visiting religious sites or the tourist spots while receiving VVIP status from the administration.
However, this is not the first time of persons posing as IAS or IRS officer being arrested in Uttarakhand.
The case of Ruby Choudhary, native of Meerut, staying in lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (lBSNAA) premises for about seven months while posing as an IAS probationer is still vivid in the public memory. The sensational case came to the fore after an Academy security officer Satyaveer Singh had registered a case under Sections 420/467/468/471 of the IPC against Choudhary in the Mussoorie police station on April 2 . Ruby was arrested the following day.
Another such case came to the fore on July 12, 2015 when Dehradun police had arrested Rajiv Sharma from Mathura on the charge of posing as an Indian Revenue Service officer while meeting Dehradun senior superintendent of police Dr Sadanand Date. Police recovered a car fitted with a blue beacon and Government of India written on it, an expired passport, a driving license, some forged rubber stamps and false visiting cards from his possession. A case under sections 418/419/170/171 of IPC was registered against Sharma and he was subsequently sent to Suddhowala jail.