In a possible case of stolen identity, the police have arrested a 22-year-old imposter who claims to be one Lieutenant Shivam Pandey
The Kolkata Police have arrested a man who claims to be an Army officer. Image: @ltshivampandey/Twitter
The officers of military intelligence and Kolkata police on Monday arrested an ‘army officer’, a Lieutenant deployed with Srinagar’s Chinar Corps, to be precise.
The crime of Lt Shivam Pandey is that he isn’t either a Lieutenant or Shivam Pandey.
In the possible case of a stolen identity, the police have arrested a 22-year-old imposter who claims to be Lt Shivam Pandey.
The conman who claimed to be an Army officer
According to a report by ThePrint, the conman, who went by the identity of ‘Lieutenant Shivam Pandey’, allegedly duped people into believing that he was an Indian Army officer posted with the Srinagar-based Chinar Corps unit.
Giving credibility to his fake persona, he published a book last year – Untold Story From The Indian Army.
After a month’s surveillance, the imposter was arrested from Kolkata’s New Market area. Four others, allegedly his ‘bodyguards’ were also arrested.
According to the report, the police found a fake Army identity card and multiple writing pads with the Army letterhead.
The alleged imposter also created an elaborate website that gave a detailed bio of “Lieutenant Shivam Pandey”.
The website’s About Us page claimed that he is a two-star rank officer of the Indian Army and is “the Commanding of the Srinagar-based Chinar Corps”.
It says that “Shivam Pandey” hails from Ghazipur and is an alumnus of “C SHEKHAR HSSD BALAPUR GHAZIPUR, National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla Pune and Indian Military Academy, Dehradun”.
The accused further adds that he was “commissioned into Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry|8 Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry (Siachen) in December 2017”.
“He has commanded the 8th battalion The Sikh Light Infantry in north Siachen glacier and chushul sector of Eastern Ladakh,” the website says.
What led to his arrest
The man was on the radar of the military intelligence for his activities on social media. He had been posting a lot of updates on Facebook, Instagram and other sites. He also marketed his book, which is available on various e-commerce websites, on social media.
According to ThePrint, even though the Army is yet to find out his real name, sources said that he was rather “evasive”.
Initial investigations have revealed that the accused is a resident of Ghazipur in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The report noted that it was his social media activity that raised suspicion against him. The alleged imposter had been promoting his book on social media and would also post about his alleged experiences in the Army.
On several occasions, he tagged Twitter, and Facebook’s parent company Meta to put a ‘blue badge’ against his account to indicate his account is authentic.
Seeing a “serving officer” so active on social media, military intelligence officers put his page under observation.
After a month of surveillance, military intelligence were sure that the accused was not an Army officer, claimed sources, as reported by ThePrint.
When the Army received a tip-off that he would be travelling to Kolkata, they devised an elaborate plan with the Kolkata Police to arrest him.
On Monday, the accused was arrested near the headquarters of the Army’s Eastern Command around midnight. The accused was dressed in combat fatigues even at the time of his arrest, they added.
With inputs from agencies
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