From PM-Kisan to pensions: How a Rajasthan network exploited direct benefit transfers

Officials claimed that several residents of Manohar Thana received PM-Kisan payments against land records shown in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh

• Over 11,000 suspicious accounts linked to Rajasthan welfare scam
• Rs 14.81 crore misappropriated under PM-Kisan scheme
• 51 people arrested, including officials and scheme operators

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Thousands of alleged ineligible beneficiaries are suspected of having fraudulently accessed government welfare schemes in Rajasthan, with investigators tracing the operation largely to Jhalawar district and beyond, according to a report by Indian Express.

According to authorities, the beneficiaries were enrolled through an organised network that ran from village-level field agents to officials in Jaipur — a parallel system insiders have dubbed a “cyber sarkar.”

The IE report stated that the alleged scam first came to light in August last year after a whistleblower flagged the diversion of funds meant for beneficiaries of the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, along with the state’s pension programme and crop loss compensation scheme.

In response, authorities launched ‘Operation Shutterdown’ in mid-October — an investigation that has since been taken over by the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Rajasthan Police. So far, 51 people, including government officials, have been arrested. Investigators have also seized electronic devices, luxury vehicles and cash exceeding Rs 3 crore.

“At the centre of the probe are more than 11,000 bank accounts flagged as suspicious,” officials told IE.

A chargesheet has been filed against 48 key accused. The probe uncovered a misappropriation of at least Rs 14.81 crore under the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, fraudulent transfers worth Rs 3.62 crore through the Rajasthan Disaster Management Information System (DMIS), and a similar amount allegedly siphoned off under the Rajasthan pension scheme in Jhalawar district alone.

Among those arrested is Mohammad Laiq, identified as the chief operator of the PM-Kisan Rajasthan nodal office.

PM-Kisan

According to investigators, the accused first mapped welfare schemes where funds could be diverted with relative ease — chief among them the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan).

Officials told IE that at the time of its rollout the scheme had relatively lax eligibility filters.

“These gaps were exploited. Even after some loopholes were plugged, the operators adapted quickly because structural flaws remained,” an investigator told IE,

According to the probe, once verification requests were generated at the tehsil or block level, higher-level nodal officials would collate data and clear applications in bulk. In many instances, the login credentials of nodal officers were allegedly handled not by the officers themselves but by clerks, contractual staff, or e-mitra/Common Service Centre operators. Investigators suspect some of these operators identified dormant or inactive accounts as targets or recruited ineligible individuals willing to share proceeds.

Officials claimed that several residents of Manohar Thana received PM-Kisan payments against land records shown in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. “As word spread, a criminal network began to take shape,” another investigator said.

Ravi Sen, a cyber investigator associated with the probe, told IE. “Under the scheme, all pending instalments from the date of registration are credited in a lump sum once the account is linked to direct benefit transfer,” he said.

Since the scheme’s launch in 2019, this has resulted in sizable bulk transfers in some cases.

Rajasthan Social Security Pension Scheme

In the case of the state pension programme — the Rajasthan Social Security Pension Scheme (RajSSP) — investigators told IE that the alleged modus operandi was to enroll ineligible individuals or exploit cases where pensions had been returned to the treasury due to technical discrepancies.

RajSSP provides minimum monthly assistance of Rs 1,300 to vulnerable groups, including the elderly, widows, single women, small farmers and persons with disabilities.

According to investigators, e-mitra operators allegedly enticed ineligible people with the promise of securing benefits, collected their personal data, and in some cases fabricated disability certificates.

Rajasthan Disaster Management Information System 

The third major scheme allegedly exploited by the accused was the state’s Disaster Management Information System (DMIS), which provides compensation to farmers for crop loss caused by natural disasters.

Investigators told IE that the network capitalised on a vulnerable stage in the process. Farmers frequently flagged discrepancies in land records, Aadhaar details or bank information, resulting in applications being sent back to the patwari’s login for correction. “It is at this stage that the criminals moved in,” officials told IE, identifying 32-year-old Bihari Lal Goyal of Manohar Thana as the suspected mastermind behind the DMIS fraud.

As in other schemes, e-mitra operators allegedly played a central role.

In some instances, eligible farmers’ details were replaced with those of the accused or their relatives. Agents and sub-agents allegedly gathered documents from ineligible individuals and used them to fraudulently claim compensation.

A physical verification ordered by the Jhalawar District Collector reportedly found 42.85% of beneficiary data to be invalid. In Tonk district, a separate review by the Land Revenue Department flagged over 90% of entries as questionable.

How were the accused arrested?

On August 8, 2025, Jhalawar police received intelligence that a man identified as Ashiq Ali was siphoning funds from government welfare schemes in the Kamkheda area. Superintendent of Police Amit Kumar lodged a complaint at the Cyber Police Station and assigned cyber investigator Ravi Sen to probe the matter.

As Sen and Kumar examined nine suspicious bank accounts and transactions linked to Ali’s mobile number, they began uncovering signs of a much larger network.

Multiple accounts had received funds under different schemes — often credited on the same day. In one instance, a single account was credited 50 times on March 10, 2022, with pension payments of Rs 500 or Rs 750 each.

The scale of alleged manipulation is stark in Jhalawar’s Aklera and Manohar Thana blocks. As many as 19,987 people were registered there for disability pensions. “According to the 2011 Census, around 2.4% of Rajasthan’s population is disabled. But in certain areas, nearly two-thirds of residents were shown as disabled,” an investigator told IE.