Agartala, July 3:
An FIR has been lodged against an IAS officer and three others in Tripura for allegedly cheating a Maharashtra-based businessman of ₹14.55 crore by promising to secure lucrative government tenders through forged documents and fabricated work orders.
The FIR was registered at NCC Police Station in Agartala on July 1 based on a complaint lodged by Manish Malani, a resident of Nagpur and representative of SK Sales Corporation.
The accused are former Tripura Information Technology and Planning Department Secretary and 2003-batch IAS officer Abhishek Chandra, along with Utpal Kumar Chowdhury, Sudip Pal and Krishna Chakraborty.
According to the complaint, Abhishek Chandra allegedly projected himself as a senior serving IAS officer in Tripura in February 2024 and assured the complainant that he could facilitate government contracts under the School Education Department, including Mid-Day Meal and power sector projects.
Acting on the assurance, the complainant’s firm entered into a joint venture agreement with Krishna Chakraborty, whose business affairs were allegedly handled by her husband, Sudip Pal, to participate in the proposed tenders.
The complaint alleges that between September 2024 and February 2025, the accused collected ₹14,55,42,945 as Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) through demand drafts against a series of purported Education Department tenders.
To make the transactions appear genuine, the accused allegedly issued a forged work order worth ₹2.56 crore in the name of the department.
The complainant further alleged that he was brought to Agartala, where he was introduced to a person posing as a Punjab National Bank manager and to Utpal Kumar Chowdhury, who was presented as a payment processing officer. To gain his confidence, the accused allegedly refunded a portion of the initial EMD and transferred small amounts to his bank account as purported returns.
Suspicions arose after neither the promised contracts nor the remaining funds materialised. On visiting the School Education Department in April 2025, the complainant allegedly found that no such tenders or work orders had ever been issued and that all the documents provided to him were forged.
The complaint also states that co-accused Utpal Kumar Chowdhury has already been arrested by the West Bengal Police in another fraud case and is currently lodged in a jail in Haryana.
The complainant has handed over a pen drive containing WhatsApp conversations and supporting documents to the police as evidence.
Based on the complaint, NCC Police have registered a case under Sections 61, 111, 204, 205, 316, 318, 319, 335, 336, 338, 340 and 341 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023. Investigators are probing the alleged fraud and examining whether a wider network was involved.
Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition and CPI(M) state secretary Jitendra Chaudhury launched a sharp attack on the state government, alleging that corruption was not confined to the accused IAS officer and claiming that even officials serving in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat were involved in large-scale financial irregularities. He further alleged that several retired senior officers had been repeatedly re-employed despite their alleged involvement in corruption.
“Mr. Abhishek Chandra is not the only Chandra. There are many ‘Chandras’ now, including some sitting in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat. Several retired senior officers have been re-employed time and again. These people are involved in corruption involving crores of rupees. This government has become completely defunct and handicapped. That is why many officers are getting involved in this kind of corruption,” Chaudhury alleged.
Meantime, police investigation is in progress. The allegations in the FIR are yet to be established in a court of law.
