* Hazari Lal, 35, a resident of Rajpura in Rajasthan’s Manohar Thana, says he was approached by a 15-year-old about two years ago, asking him for a photo of his Aadhaar card, in order to avail a government cash scheme, and promising him 50% of the amount in exchange. Eight days later, Lal got the promised half: Rs 5,000. The man who allegedly gave him the money, Ram Babu, is now in police custody; Lal claims he still has no idea of the scheme under which he received the money.* Dinesh Kumar, 38, a mobile shop owner in Jhalawar’s Battukheri village, recalls filling up a form and sharing his Aadhaar details around three-four years ago, as “everyone was doing so”. Not long after, his wife received money under PM-Kisan, and “a few months ago”, he got Rs 32,000 under the same scheme in one go. Under PM-Kisan, Rs 6,000 is provided annually to all landholding farmer families, in three equal instalments. Kumar’s father owns “10-12 bigahs” of land, but he doesn’t own any.* Ram Dayal, 25, a resident of Madanpura village in Manohar Thana, says he was taken by surprise when Rs 33,000 landed in his account two years ago. Since he had not applied for any scheme, Dayal adds, he was alarmed. “I approached the Collector and informed the cyber police station,” says the owner of a small clinic. A local photocopy shop worker was later arrested, and the money debited from Dayal’s account. Dayal suspects the shop worker retained a copy of his Aadhaar at some point, and used it to apply for a government scheme.* Bhagwan Das, 30, a resident of Khatakheri in Manohar Thana, says the local e-mitra operator told him about a scheme for labourers about two years ago. “He said I would get the money, and that the two of us could share it equally. Since everyone around was giving him their Aadhaar number, I also did,” says Das. He received Rs 34,000, he says. “I took half of it and spent it on my kharcha paani (small expenses).”* Biram Lal, 25, claims to have been approached by a group of men a few years ago, and urged to share his and his sister’s Aadhaar details. Soon, he received money under Rajasthan’s social security pension scheme, and his sister got PM-Kisan instalments, with the men taking half of it. Admitting that neither he nor his sister were eligible under the schemes, Lal claims: “I didn’t know it was illegal, the men fooled me.” Hazari Lal, 35; Dinesh Kumar, 38; Bhagwan Das, 30; Biram Lal, 25; and Ram Dayal, 25, are believed to be among thousands of illegal beneficiaries of government schemes across the state. (Express photo by Hamza Khan)THE FIVE above are believed to be among thousands of illegal beneficiaries of government schemes across mainly Rajasthan’s Jhalawar district, besides others, roped in by a network spread from field agents working at the village level, to government officials in capital Jaipur. Officials have a name for this parallel set-up – a “cyber sarkar”.In August last year, a whistleblower first brought attention to this scam involving diversion of money meant for beneficiaries of largely the Centre’s PM-Kisan scheme, the state’s pension programme and the compensation scheme for crop loss. The ‘Operation Shutterdown’ launched in response in mid-October – now taken over by the Special Operations Group of the state police – has so far led to the arrest of 51 people, including government officials, as well as the seizure of electronic devices, luxury vehicles, and cash worth more than Rs 3 crore. In the mix, say investigators, were over 11,000 “suspicious” bank accounts.Story continues below this adA chargesheet has been filed against 48 key accused, while investigators have found at least Rs 14.81 crore misappropriation in the PM-Kisan scheme, Rs 3.62 crore worth of fraud transfers under the Rajasthan Disaster Management Information System (DMIS), and, in Jhalawar alone, a similar amount illegally claimed under the Rajasthan pension scheme.One of those arrested is the chief operator of PM-Kisan’s Rajasthan nodal office, Mohammad Laiq.As per a top official, “Sensitive data of around 99 lakh people has been found with the accused.”The schemes, the scamPM-KisanThe accused are believed to have first identified schemes from which the money was the easiest to divert, such as PM-Kisan.Story continues below this adThe scheme initially had ‘lax’ eligibility criteria, such as no cap on the number of beneficiaries within a family, no requirement of separate land records for each person, and no condition that the application be from within the state. Also, if an application wasn’t approved within a given time frame, it would be auto-approved.“This was exploited by the scamsters, and even after these loopholes were plugged, they adapted quickly as the scheme still had several flaws,” an investigator says.For example, after a verification request was submitted at the tehsil or block level, higher-level nodal officials collected the data and approved applications in bulk. The ID of the nodal officer at the tehsil or block level was often operated by a clerk or contractual employee and, in many places, by e-mitras or Common Service Centre operators. Officials suspect that the e-mitras first smelled an opportunity and began targeting accounts lying inactive, or roping in ineligible individuals.With the auto-approval facility still active in some states, they also registered people in the neighbouring states for a commission.Story continues below this adAccording to officials, several residents of Manohar Thana received PM-Kisan money for land shown in states such as Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh. “As the word spread, a criminal gang began to form,” says the investigator.Ravi Sen, a cyber investigator with police, points to another PM-Kisan loophole. “Under it, all pending instalments from the date of registration of a beneficiary are transferred the same day as their account is linked to direct benefit transfer.” Since 2019, when the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme was launched, Sen estimates, bulk transfers have happened in many cases.“Any account inactive for two-three years hence is eligible for a substantial sum, which (once transferred) was divided among the ‘beneficiary’, the middleman, the agent, etc,” Sen says.An account can become inactive due to various reasons, such as false or incorrect information, or if an applicant was found to be a government employee or an income tax payee, for example, making them ineligible.Rajasthan Social Security Pension Scheme (RajSSP):Story continues below this adIn the case of this scheme, the usual modus operandi was to register ineligible persons or target those whose pension had for some reason been returned to the treasury.The RajSSP, as the scheme is commonly known, is meant to provide monthly financial assistance – of minimum Rs 1,300 currently – to vulnerable groups such as the elderly, widows, single women, small farmers and persons with disabilities.Investigators say that the e-mitras lured ineligible individuals with the promise of providing benefits and obtained their personal data. They then fabricated certificates, using fake doctor seals in some cases, to claim that the individuals had a disability of over 40%, and generated their application IDs on the web portal.An investigator says that one of the officials who facilitated the transfer was an operator with Jhalawar’s Chief Medical and Health Officer (CMHO). “The CMHO office verifies the disability certificate applications, and issues the certificates through a simple OTP sent to the registered mobile number. The operator collected the details by using the mobile number allotted to the CMHO,” the investigator says.Story continues below this adThis operator, along with some associates, has since been arrested.Personnel at the local Tehsildar and Block Development Office further helped plug gaps in the physical verification process.In Jhalawar’s Aklera and Manohar Thana, the numbers speak for themselves. Overall, 19,987 persons were registered here to receive social security pension due to disability. An investigator said: “As per the 2011 Census, around 2.4% of the people in Rajasthan are disabled. However, the scamsters showed almost two-thirds of the population in certain areas as disabled.”Says Sen: “There was a case where the man, his wife and both his parents were lifting pension for the disabled – while being able-bodied – and also managed to get two scooters under a government scheme.”Story continues below this adThe scamsters also found a way to gain if any account detail was found to be wrong, in which case the Pension Payment Order (PPO) was returned to the treasury.“The pension amount is returned due to many reasons, including accounts being closed, or the IFSC code being wrong. The gang members would get information about the list of such beneficiaries, and simply update the records with their own account number, or those of their relatives and acquaintances,” says an investigator.This is how a 25-year-old Biram Lal could be shown to be eligible for pension.“You will find pensioners who are technically receiving the pension, but the money is going to someone else’s account,” says Prem Choudhary, who was the initial Investigating Officer in the case, before it was transferred to the Special Operations Group.Investigators say they have traced at least 51,000 fraudulent PPOs.Disaster Management Information System (DMIS):Story continues below this adThe third key scheme targeted by scamsters was the state’s DMIS, which gives out compensation in the event of crop loss or damage due to natural disasters.Crop loss records are recorded on the DMIS portal, based on which compensation is disbursed to farmers from the State Disaster Relief Fund. The verification is done by the local land revenue officer or halka patwari, and also at the tehsildar’s office.Often, farmers report errors or contradictions in their land records, Aadhaar, and bank account information, resulting in the data being reverted to the Patwari’s ID for correction. “It is at this stage that the criminals moved in,” investigators say, adding that Manohar Thana’s Bihari Lal Goyal, 32, was the ‘mastermind’ of the DMIS scam.Again, the e-mitras played a key role, obtaining a Patwari’s unique Single Sign-On (SSO) Identity and password – whether this was done through hacking too is under investigation – and putting in their own details.Investigators say a ‘bypass link’ of the DMIS portal was recovered from some of the seized digital devices.In some cases, the accused replaced details of eligible farmers with their own or that of relatives, on the portal. The agents and sub-agents also collected documents from ineligible farmers and used them to lift money illegally. “They would target areas where crops were affected by inclement weather,” an investigator says.A physical verification of the scheme’s beneficiaries by the District Collector, Jhalawar, in fact, found about 42.85% of the data to be invalid. A similar report from Tonk’s Land Revenue Department found this figure to be over 90%.In one case, the investigators found the same mobile number linked to three bank accounts, belonging to two different people, who availed scheme benefits between 2021 and 2025.The whistleblower, the arrestsOn August 8, 2025, the Jhalawar police received a tip-off that a person by the name of Ashiq Ali was defrauding government schemes in the district’s Kamkheda area. SP Amit Kumar filed a complaint with the Cyber Police Station, and deputed Ravi Sen to investigate.As Sen and another Constable, Sumit Kumar, started digging into nine suspicious bank accounts, and transactions linked to Ali’s mobile number, they got the first inklings of an extensive operation involving multiple accounts, with money under various schemes deposited into them on a single day.In one case, an account was credited 50 times, with pension funds of Rs 500 or Rs 750, on March 10, 2022, alone.On the night of October 22, 2025, Jhalawar District SP Amit Kumar coordinated raids across Jhalawar, Dausa and Dudu districts in Rajasthan, and Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh, arresting 30 accused over roughly 70 hours.The investigations led to Rajulal Saini and Ramavtar Saini, both residents of Dausa. Ramavtar, a 28-year-old former sugarcane juice seller, was established as “the mastermind”, with investigators admitting surprise at his knowledge of intricate government systems.Ramavtar would allegedly ‘hire’ people with information about e-services, and send them to villages and towns to identify people who were vulnerable. His agents (he is suspected to have had at least 16 on his rolls), with their own network of sub-agents, allegedly would then share the data they collected on such people with Ramavtar. Three ‘operators’ allegedly helped him compile this data, which was then sent allegedly to Vikram Saini through Vikram’s aide Naresh Saini. The last step was getting various schemes linked to these accounts, with Ramavtar and his agents getting the bulk of the profits.In many cases, once the money was transferred, the accounts were deactivated.Explaining why e-mitras were preferred, Sen says: “They have details of hundreds of persons in their gram panchayats and personally know many of them.”Ramavtar was found to have 14 bank accounts linked to his number, including two in the name of his relatives.An investigator says: “Vikram was the ‘technical expert’, who took help of apps such as Burp Suite to find flaws in the PM-Kisan’s central node, and breached passwords to gain access, approve ineligible accounts, and create official state, district and tehsil level IDs.”Bihari Lal, one of those arrested for the DMIS scam, had allegedly with him material related to the scheme’s portal, links and passwords, and details of thousands of suspicious bank accounts and numerous questionable transactions.Ramavtar also tapped senior officials with the authority to approve the transfer of amounts.One such official, Mohammad Laiq, allegedly created district nodal IDs for private individuals and also approved bulk data obtained by Ramavatar’s parallel agents using the state nodal ID.Laiq’s alleged accomplices who have been arrested include Vasudev Pareek, a Dudu native who ran the nodal ID for districts; Ramesh Chand, a staffer in the Phalodi Collectorate; Mohammad Shahid Khan of Bharatpur; and Bhagchand, a resident of Lotwada in Dausa.Investigators admit that, but for the whistleblower, the scam would have gone unchecked as “beneficiaries” were hardly likely to step up and file complaints. “Why would someone who is illegally getting government money, go and complain?” an investigator says, adding that many cases also got wrapped up once the irregular accounts were closed.The tip of the iceberg?Ramavtar has told police that Vikram Saini, 25, had “40 people like me” working for him in districts.A Rs 25,000 reward was announced on Vikram and his aide Naresh Saini each, and in November, police arrested both from Dausa. Outside one of Vikram’s hideouts was written: “Dhanvan banana itna avashyak nahin ki uske liye imaan bhi khona pade (Becoming wealthy isn’t so essential that one loses one’s integrity over it).”Says SP Kumar: “People ask us about the estimate of the scam. I tell them I can’t say, because we have caught only one module; there are perhaps many similar ones in the state and the country.”