Odisha police have arrested a youth on charges of impersonating the private secretary to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi and attempting to extort money from a mining official.
The accused has been identified as Aman Pradhan, 24. According to the police, Aman posed as IAS officer Manoj Kumar Sahoo, the private secretary to the chief minister, and called Deputy Director of Mines, Rourkela, Bimbadhar Sethi, on April 22, demanding money.
Sethi disconnected the call, suspecting it might be a spam call. However, Pradhan called again and reiterated his demand. Sethi listened carefully but grew suspicious of the caller’s identity based on his language, pronunciation, and manner of speaking, which did not align with that of a senior bureaucrat.
Subsequently, Sethi lodged an FIR at the Rourkela police station. Acting on the complaint, police tracked the number and arrested Pradhan from Bhubaneswar. During interrogation, Pradhan, who hails from Kalahandi district, admitted to the impersonation attempt.
Sethi, who has been residing in Bhubaneswar for the past two years, has been trying to secure a permanent posting.
The real Manoj Kumar Sahoo is a 2006-batch IAS officer from the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre. He was appointed as Special Secretary to Chief Minister Mohan Majhi on an inter-cadre deputation basis in December 2024. Before this assignment, Sahoo served as the Deputy Election Commissioner at the Election Commission of India in New Delhi.