The man from the PMO

How Kiran Patel got so far with his audacious con in Kashmir and the aftermath of his arrest

- TARIQ BHAT AND NANDINI OZA

He stayed at the Lalit Grand Palace, the five-star heritage hotel in Srinagar, Kashmir, overlooking the Dal lake, and got Z-plus security cover during visits to different parts of Kashmir. For months, Kiran Patel, from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, conned the Jammu and Kashmir administration by posing as additional director (planning and strategy) in the prime minister’s office (PMO).

He made multiple visits to J&K and even held meetings with bureaucrats, suggesting ideas to boost horticulture, especially apple production. He was arrested on March 2 after the J&K Police got a tip-off from Delhi that he was a conman. He had two accomplices, Amit Pandya and Jai Sitapara, both from Gujarat; Patel had introduced them as “officials from the PMO”. However, they were not arrested as the police felt they might have been misled by the conman.

Patel’s arrest has come as a relief to security agencies, but the embarrassment persists. More significantly, the incident is seen as a serious security lapse in the militancy-hit Union territory. Vijay Kumar, additional director general of police, said the con was not the result of an intelligence lapse, but a “mistake which is being investigated”. He said the police do not provide security cover based on verbal communiques (such requests usually come in writing from the PMO). “Any officer who ordered security for the conman will be dealt with,” he said.