Delhi tea seller pretends to be IPS officer for monetary favours, held

North Delhi's Mukherjee Nagar is known for coaching centres and home to several civil services aspirants, who come far away from all corners of the country for preparations, but interestingly, a man, who used to sell tea in the area, started influencing and cheating, mostly women after impersonating himself as a newly recruited IPS officer.

30-year-old accused Vikas Gautam alias Vikas Yadav, an 8th class dropout, got so possessed by the IAS/IPS aspirants taking coaching from prominent institutes in Mukherjee Nagar while selling tea in front of the institute that he became Vikas Yadav, 2020 batch IPS officer (UP Cadre) on all social media platforms and cheated more than 50 persons of more than Rs 14 lakh, said an official.

Police said that he also used his fake identity to get work done in different departments in lieu of monetary favours.

Read | How Poonawala gave love a bad name

According to Harendra K. Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer), a case was registered on December 17, at the cyber police station of the Outer district after a woman doctor, working at Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, Delhi registered a complaint stating that one person with the fake ID of IPS officer Vikas Yadav on Instagram and Facebook became friends with her and after a few days of conversations, had asked her to deposit Rs 25,000 by PhonePe saying that he needed the money for treatment of his mother who is suffering from a life-threatening disease.

"A police team was formed and after in-depth electronic surveillance, analysis of CDRs of the mobile numbers of the suspect obtained from the complainant and Social Media Portals, the suspect was located in Gwalior. Raids were conducted and Vikas was apprehended," said the official.

"He first denied his involvement in any type of crime. However, on checking his mobile phone Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts in the name of IPS Vikas Yadav and Gmail ID '[e-mail]' were found logged in," said the official.

In 2019, Vikas came to Delhi and worked at a hotel in Mukherjee Nagar in front of Drishti Institute, a coaching institute for civil services aspirants and came in contact with many civil services aspirants.

"After the UPSC results in 2020, Vikas changed his Instagram profile name to 'Vikashyadav_ips' and posted the 'list of candidates selected' on his Instagram profile, declaring his selection into UPSC," said the official.

"He then came in contact with many high-profile persons through that fake Instagram profile and presently has 19,700 followers on the fake Instagram ID. He then identified and contacted his victims pretending to be under trainee IPS and influenced them to get their work done and started taking money from them," said the official.