New Delhi: Vijay Vishwas Pant, the 2004-batch IAS officer currently heading the high-profile Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the Ram Mandir donation scam, was named an accused in a criminal case involving alleged cheating and forgery. The case against him dates back to developments during his tenure as a top power distribution official in western Uttar Pradesh from 2013 to 2015.In February 2019, Pant was among 14 officials from the Western Electricity Distribution Corporation (WEDC) booked under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating) and 465 (forgery) at the Parikshitgarh police station in Meerut.The First Information Report (FIR) followed a complaint by a labour contractor who accused the department officials of altering official records to withhold his payments. While Pant was named in the FIR as the Managing Director of WEDC – a position he held from February 7, 2013, to December 3, 2015 – the core allegations do not appear to target him directly.Pant currently serves as the Divisional Commissioner of Lucknow. He was the District Magistrate of Kanpur when the case was originally registered in 2019 on the complaint of Shivkumar Sharma, the labour contractor.The link between the SIT chief and the pending fraud case was first reported by Hindi language journalist Abhishek Upadhyay on his social media channel, Top Secret.“The one who is himself under investigation for fraud and forgery, is conducting the probe into the embezzlement, fraud, and forgery at Ram Mandir! So how will the Ram Mandir investigation be impartial? It will be exactly as the government dictates,” Upadhyay wrote on X on July 8.News of the case has surfaced ten days after the Pant-led SIT submitted its preliminary findings on the alleged theft of donations at the Ayodhya Ram temple to the Uttar Pradesh government on June 23, 2026. A final report from the SIT is expected by the end of July.Vishwa Jyoti Rai, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Meerut who is looking into the earlier case involving Pant and others, told The Wire that the inquiry in the earlier case was still on. “Vivechna prachalit hain (The inquiry is ongoing),” he said.The officer appealed that any person associated with the case who has evidence regarding it should contact him.While addressing a press conference in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh Congress spokesperson Surendra Rajput mentioned the case as he spoke about the Ram temple donation scam. “The BJP government appointed the very person accused of robbery and embezzlement as the head of the SIT investigating the theft of temple offerings,” he said, referring to Pant.“The SIT is a cover up. And I hear that questions are being raised about the SIT itself. One of its members is facing an FIR under (IPC) 420 (cheating). Now, tell me, such a person is going to remain in the SIT,” said Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow while speaking to reporters.The Wire tried to reach Pant on his official number but the call was not received. Pant also did not respond to a Whatsapp text seeking his response on the matter. The story will be updated if or when he responds.Case against WEDC officials, including its then MDThe complainant, Shivkumar Sharma, proprietor of Durga Electricals, alleged that department officials used correction fluid and overwrote figures in official measurement books to drastically reduce the recorded volume of work his firm completed.Sharma said that his firm was contracted in September 2007 to electrify three villages – Chur, Kalandi and Mulheda – under the Ambedkar Gram Vikas Yojana. Though the work was self-certified as successfully completed by December 31, 2007, Sharma alleged that officials labelled his firm bhagoda (absconder) to evade verifying his bills, demanding commissions instead. “When I objected to their demand for commission in lieu of getting paid, they started using fluid over the records,” Sharma told The Wire.Sharma alleged that when he pushed for payment, power department officials conspired to falsely implicate him in an electrical accident involving a private well that occurred around three years later, on August 29, 2010. He said that after he filed internal departmental complaints, the department retaliated by lodging three frivolous “counter” FIRs against him, including one under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, accusing him of misappropriating materials. “I was being systematically harassed,” he said.Sharma had to navigate an exhausting legal maze for several years to get the matter investigated and the FIR lodged. He sought information on the matter under the RTI Act but was stonewalled for three years by the electricity department. Thereafter, he approached the Allahabad High Court, which ordered that he be provided the information within a month.Due to the delay in securing all the necessary records through RTI, Sharma said there was also a long delay in submitting his police complaint, which was eventually done in December 2017, a decade after his contract with the electricity department came into force.The 14 persons booked were Radheshyam Yadav (chief engineer), Shrikant Prasad, V.N. Singh (superintending engineer, distribution circle), Rajpal Singh (then superintending engineer), Rajveer Singh (executive engineer), A.C. Srivastava (then executive engineer), Kitab Singh (former executive engineer), Sandeep Kumar Nirbhay (former executive engineer), Satendra Singh Rana (retired junior engineer), Ravindra Pal Singh (then junior engineer), Ramveer Singh (then SDO), U.V. Srivastava (then SDO), S.K. Bahl (junior engineer) and Vijay Vishwas Pant (managing director, WEDC). Sharma accused them of “planned conspiracy and fraud.”The FIR was registered on the orders of the Meerut Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), following a February 15, 2019 inquiry report by Circle Officer (Sadar Dehat) Chakrapani Tripathi. Sharma had directly escalated the matter to the Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) to trigger the probe. He alleged that during his earlier attempts to seek justice, the initial investigating officer actively pressured him to drop the case, warning him of the perils of fighting a state department and attempting to force a settlement.Case proceeds slowly through the systemThe police have twice attempted to close the case, only to face strict resistance from the court due to gaps in the investigation. First, the police submitted a final report (closure report) concluding that no offence was made out, which the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court rejected on March 16, 2021, acting on a protest petition filed by Sharma.The court ordered the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Meerut to ensure a competent officer conducted further investigation. However, a sub-inspector rank officer took over the case and submitted a second final report echoing the first conclusion, prompting Sharma to file a second protest petition.On March 22, 2023, Chief Judicial Magistrate Vinay Kumar rejected the second closure report, strongly reprimanding the police for severe procedural lapses and ordering the Meerut SSP to assign the case to a Circle Officer rank or higher official.Sharma said that the investigation in the matter was still ongoing and that a chargesheet had yet to be filed, although this could not be independently verified by The Wire.CJM Kumar’s 2023 order noted several lapses and deficiencies in the investigation report and ruled that it was justified to conduct further investigation to address those deficiencies. The order noted that page 10 of the case diary of the investigation officer had summarily removed Vijay Vishwas Pant’s name from the investigation.Moreover, both the investigators, Narendra Singh and Shiv Nayaran Singh, had failed to record statements from independent witnesses or even of all of the accused. The police had submitted that Sharma filed the case against the officials only to escape the multiple criminal charges against him.The CJM also observed that the police did not take the overwritten documents into custody or carry out a scientific examination on them. The statement of then Circle Officer, Chakrapani Tripathi, was also not recorded by the investigating officer despite him noting that Sharma’s allegations were serious and required proper evaluation.CJM Kumar also said that the 2021 order had instructed the SSP Meerut to get the case investigated by a senior officer, as the case involved a senior IAS officer then posted as Divisional Commissioner of Azamgarh, but despite this, the investigation was conducted by a sub-inspector-rank officer.Omar Rashid is an independent journalist.