A scheme with a gramin name
Published 3 October 2026
The first sentence of the Haryana FIR that matters here is plain: two accounts were opened on 26 September 2025, one at IDFC First Bank and one at AU Small Finance Bank, under a scheme called MMGAY-2.0.
What the FIR says
The FIR, registered by the Haryana State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, says that two accounts were opened on 26 September 2025, in IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, under the MMGAY-2.0 scheme. Initially, funds of Rs 50 crore and Rs 25 crore respectively were transferred, in line with the fund limits in the Finance Department's instructions of 12 July 2024. The scheme, per the CBI chargesheet reported later by The Indian Express, is the Mukhya Mantri Gramin Awas Yojana 2.0, run through the Development and Panchayats Department.
The department's own inquiry committee, formed on 11 February 2026, found that no approvals for fund utilisation from the competent authority had been issued at any stage, and that the entire amounts were supposed to remain secure in the accounts for the whole duration. In other words, the accounts were meant to hold the money, not move it.
Who chose the banks
The CBI's September chargesheet addresses the choice of bank. It accuses Dr Saket Kumar, a 2005-batch IAS officer who at the time was additional principal secretary to the chief minister, of "conspiring with the bankers and others to dishonestly misappropriate funds" of the Development and Panchayat Department under the scheme. The CBI alleges he influenced D K Behera, the department's director general, to open accounts with two private banks. Behera told the CBI, according to the chargesheet, that he was competent to open the account in a suitable bank, but since Dr Saket Kumar had asked that the account be opened with Axis Bank for the land compensation fund and with IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank for the infrastructure development fund, the file was processed accordingly.
The matter, the CBI says, was brought to Saket Kumar by Naresh Kumar, a superintendent in the RTI wing who had no official connection with the scheme and was allegedly acting for Rishi. It did not come through the directorate. A department staffer, Manoj Kaushal, told the CBI that officials of both banks said they had come "through the reference of Saket Kumar" to collect the account-opening documents.
These are the CBI's allegations in a chargesheet. Saket Kumar, Garg and Shayin, according to The Indian Express, did not respond to text messages or phone calls seeking comment. The Haryana government removed Saket Kumar from the Chief Minister's Office and posted him as Commissioner and Secretary, Archives, after the scam surfaced, according to ThePrint. He has not been arrested, and a court has not examined the chargesheet's claims. They are quoted here because they bear on a question the file has to ask: who decided that this scheme's money would sit at these two banks?
The thing about Sukoon
The chargesheet also cites a WhatsApp group. According to The Indian Express, the CBI found that Saket Kumar was a member of the "Sukoon Group" chat along with officials of IDFC First Bank. It also cites a recovered voice conversation between Naresh Kumar and Rishi, in which instructions attributed to "Saket Sir" include a Hindi phrase that the investigators interpret as an instruction to contain and suppress the fraud rather than report it. The CBI's reading of a phrase in a recorded conversation is an interpretation, and the person to whom it is attributed has not, in the sources reviewed here, responded to it publicly.
Why September matters
The dates give this chapter its place in the chronology. By 26 September 2025, both principal bank employees had left the bank. The FIR's account is that the accounts opened that day later saw the unauthorised movement it describes. The bank's case is that the fraud was limited to one branch and that it was carried out by "collusion between branch employees, certain employees of the customers and certain individuals external to the bank", per the KPMG review it disclosed.
The two accounts opened on 26 September were small by the standards of the whole case. What happened two weeks later was not. The Finance Department changed a rule.
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