Engineering graduate poses as probationary IPS officer; cools his heels in jail

Mysuru: An engineering graduate calling himself a Kerala Cadre IPS officer on probation tried to pull a fast one on City Police officers by seeking an air-conditioned SUV for a family vacation. But an alert officer from  Krishnaraja Police Station caught his lie and the conman has now been arrested and sent to judicial custody.

The conman has been identified as 35-year-old C.N. Dilip, son of late Nijalingappa and a resident of Vijayanagar Third Stage, Third Main ‘A’ Block. He completed his engineering at a college in Mandya and secured a degree from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). Police said that Dilip had a passion for civil services but had failed in his attempts to clear the competitive exams.

Dilip’s late father was a bureaucrat who served the Karnataka government. Dilip tried to cheat the Police by presenting an edited copy of a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) notification issued in December 2018.

According to Krishnaraja Police, Dilip met Inspector V. Narayanaswamy on Apr. 14 and claimed to be a 2017-batch IPS officer on probation from the Kerala cadre. He promptly pulled out an MHA notification to authenticate his appointment and sought an air-conditioned Innova SUV for a family vacation from Apr. 19.

Dileep told the Police officer that he had come to the city for holidays and asked the inspector to arrange the SUV for sightseeing. He directed the Police to pay the SUV rent and the driver’s allowances. “At the very first meeting, I found it fishy. His behaviour was strange. He had downloaded an MHA notification from its  website as PDF and tinkered with it to produce a letter that declared him an IPS officer,” Narayanaswamy said.

Dilip lacked even basic understanding of how a Police department functions but still made persistent demands for an SUV. He asked the Inspector to send the SUV to his house in Vijayanagar. Suspicious of his behaviour, the Police checked the Home Ministry website for 2017 IPS officers’ list and found that Dilip’s claims were false.

The serial number (144, rank 759) printed in the certificate produced by Dilip had the name of Padam Singh from Rajasthan. Later the Police deputed two Constables near his residence to confirm his credentials. Within hours, they found him to be a fraudster.

Dilip had made repeated calls to Narayanaswamy demanding the vehicle and spoke to the Inspector in a rude manner. “Once we knew he was cheating us, we arrested him,” Narayanaswamy said. The Constables deputed to check Dilip’s antecedents reported to the Police Station that Dilip lived with his sister at Vijayanagar.

The Police also came to know that Dilip hailed from Chitradurga and used to introduce himself as a probationary IPS Officer wherever he went. He also lied to some members of his family that he had cleared the civil service exam.

Dilip also put out an advertisement in a newspaper claiming he had cleared the exam and had been selected as an IPS officer. Seeing the ads, some private organisations had even felicitated him. Realising that his con has worked, Dilip craved for publicity. After fooling commoners, Dilip decided to play the trick on Police officials that did not work.

Realising that Dilip was a fraud, Narayanaswamy then trapped him by instructing the driver of the SUV to pick Dilip from his house and bring him to the Police Station. The driver did exactly as he was told. Dilip has now been sent to judicial custody and his dealings are being investigated.