A VIII-class dropout, who duped gullible people impersonating as Indian Police Service (IPS) officers on social media, has been caught in Delhi. He mostly targeted women. Among his victims is a female doctor of Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, Delhi.

The accused has been identified as Vikas Gautam (30), a native of Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. He took a cue from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and IPS aspirants taking coaching from prominent institutes in Mukherjee Nagar, while selling tea in front of one of the institutes.

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He created IDs in the name of Vikas Yadav (IPS 2020 batch) on all social media platforms and started influencing and cheating people, mostly women who fell for the newly-recruited IPS officers.

According to the police, accused Vikas Gautam studied up to Class VIII from a convent School in Gwalior. In the year 2010, he enrolled himself with ITI (Welder Trade) in a government ITI, located in Gwalior.

In 2019, he came to Delhi and started working at a Hotel situated in Mukherjee Nagar in front of Drishti Institute (a coaching institute for civil services aspirants) and came in contact with many civil services aspirants.

After the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) results in 2020, he changed his Instagram profile name to ‘Vikashyadav_IPS’ and posted the ‘list of candidates selected’ on his Instagram profile, declaring his selection into UPSC and thereby came in contact with many high-profile persons through his fake Instagram ID of ‘Vikas Yadav IPS’ and gained over 20 thousand followers on his ID.

Later, by impersonating as under-trainee IPS Vikas Yadav, he started contacting and cheating victims by inducing them with a promise to get their work done. The accused is said to have cheated over 50 persons of more than Rs 14 lakh by using his fake identity to get work done in different departments in lieu of monetary favours.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer Delhi), Harendra Kumar Singh said a case was registered on December 17 at Cyber Police Station of Outer District, on the complaint of a female doctor working in Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, Delhi.

The complainant alleged that one person with fake ID of IPS Vikas Yadav on Instagram and Facebook befriended her and after a few days of conversations, asked her to deposit Rs 25,000 by phone pay saying that he needed the money for treatment of her mother who is suffering from a life threatening disease.

The DCP said that to catch the culprit a team cyber police station started technical surveillance and traced the location of the accused in Gwalior. Further the accused was apprehended from Gwalior after police conducted a raid at his location.