NIA cop impersonator held, turns out to be repeat offender

HYDERABAD: A 25-year-old civil services aspirant, notorious for faking his identity, was arrested on Thursday for posing as a National Investigation Agency (NIA) cop. He was caught thrice in the past two years in the Telugu states and four cases were booked against him.
Incidentally, posing as a cop, he used to get railway reservation, movie tickets, toll fee exceptions, VIP darshans at temples and demand concessions at shopping malls.
Task Force police arrested pseudo cop from his rented accommodation. “He has been cheating cheating his friends and relatives by introducing himself as additional superintendent of police, NIA,” Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar said at a media briefing.
The accused, who had finished graduation, wanted to become a police officer. His father is an ex-serviceman settled in a village near Giddalur. The accused wrote Civil services exam in 2016 and could not clear it. As friends and people from his village kept on asking him about his job, he allegedly created a fake ID Card of an Air Force flying officer and showed it to his relatives and friends.
In 2017, he came to Hyderabad and again prepared for Civils for eight months at a coaching institute at Ashok Nagar, but failed to crack even the prelims exam.
Not just the UPSC Civils exam, he could not even clear APPSC (group-1), SI recruitment exam and Staff Selection Commission (SSC), but several of his friends, who had prepared with him in Hyderabad, managed to get government jobs.
After the prelims results were announced in 2017, he told his friends and relatives that he had cleared the UPSC exam and became an IPS officer. He prepared a fake ID Card as an IPS officer and also created a fake call letter for training in the name of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA). He was arrested by Giddalur police in 2017 for creating forged documents and sent to jail.
After coming out of prison, he returned to Hyderabad. On January 1, 2019, he was arrested by the Neredmet police when he tried to enter the College of Defence Management (CDM) campus at Sainikpuri carrying a fake NIA ID Card.
After coming out of prison, he again enrolled for Civils coaching in an institute at Ashok Nagar posing as an Additional SP of NIA and befriended Major G Srinivasa Rao (Rtd).
While visiting Rao’s house, the accused saw a toy pistol and assuming that it was a fire arm, he stole it. After stealing the toy pistol, he stopped meeting Rao. “The former major realised about the missing toy gun and enquired with the NIA about the accused. He realised that the accused was a fraud and lodged a complaint with Gandhi Nagar police,” the commissioner said.
Earlier, he had nearly got a man sacked
The accused nearly sabotaged the career of a pharma executive, working for a firm in Genome Valley, Shamirpet. Posing as an NIA officer, he befriended three housewives on Facebook. One of them was the pharma executive’s wife. He decided to get her husband sacked so that she will desert him.
To achieve his objective, he called up Shamirpet police posing as an Additional SP of NIA and asked them for details of companies operating out of Genome Valley and their employees. Shamirpet cops dutifully emailed the list to the accused. He identified his lady love’s husband and purportedly prepared an ‘NIA letter’, addressing the firm’s management asking them to sack the particular employee as he was an accused in a case. Luckily, before he could dispatch the letter, Task Force police arrested him. Based on the findings of Task Force, Shamirpet police booked a case against the accused.
Civil services aspirant duped many top cops
Not just lay people, he even fooled several policemen, including some IPS officers, and took selfies with them. Major Rao (Rtd), who teaches at a coaching centre at Ashok Nagar, introduced the accused as an IPS officer working with NIA to a DCP in the city.
As the DCP knew Rao, he did not suspect anything foul and the accused even took a selfie with the officer. he also took selfie with an SP currently posted in one of the districts of Rayalaseema in Andhra Pradesh. Police also found a photo of him sitting in the official chair of one of the ACPs in Hyderabad.
In 2017, Giddalur SI arrested the accused when he visited the police station posing as a trainee IPS officer, who came for inspection. He carried a fake ID card and a training ‘invitation letter’ from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie. Police said the accused downloads logos of various government departments, including NIA and prepares letter heads and ID cards in his laptop. Using the soft copies prepared in his laptop, he gets ID cards, diaries and letter heads printed outside.