A man hailing from the western Indian state of Gujarat has been arrested by police from a five-star hotel in Srinagar in the northern union territory of Jammu and Kashmir for posing as an ‘additional secretary’ in the Narendra Modi government and enjoying security cover besides other hospitality.
According to court documents, Kiran Patel was on his third visit to the Kashmir valley and was subsequently nabbed by alert security officials on March 3.
Patel had claimed he had been given mandate by the government to identify buyers for apple orchards in south Kashmir and a couple of Indian Administrative Services officers were in awe of him as he had been dropping names of high-ranking bureaucrats and politicians in the national capital.
He was produced before a court in Srinagar on Wednesday (15) evening for extension of his police remand. A case under relevant sections of cheating and forgery was registered against him on March 2 and he was arrested the next day.
During his earlier visit, he had travelled to tourist hotspot Gulmarg claiming that the government had tasked him to look for improvement of hotel facilities in the area.
Security agencies got suspicious after he landed at the airport on March 2 as there was no information of any VIP movement.
An attempt was made to stop him at the airport but this could not fructify as he had already stepped into a bulletproof car on the way to the hotel.
After his questioning and subsequent arrest, security officials recovered forged identity cards from his possession, the documents said.
(With PTI inputs)
Army personnel stand amid the rubble following an explosion inside the police headquarters at Kohat in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on September 18, 2026. An explosion at a historic police headquarters in northern Pakistan on September 18 killed at least eight people and wounded 35 more, officials said, with the country's president swiftly blaming a militant group. Getty Images
Mourners read the holy Quran while sitting around the grave of a paramilitary personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC) who was killed during the Afghanistan-Pakistan border clashes, in Kohat on October 17, 2025. A ceasefire along the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan was holding on October 16, officials on both sides said, after dozens of troops and civilians were killed in cross-border clashes.Getty Images
