Sitamarhi: Lalit Kishore’s story sounds like something from a film, but for his family in Sitamarhi, it is a painful reality. In Ward Number 37 of Mehsoul East, under the Mehsoul police station area, his mother and four brothers still live in extreme poverty. They earn their living through daily labour and stay in small, broken huts built on a tiny piece of land. There is no farmland, no permanent income and often not enough food. Seeing their condition, it is hard to believe that Lalit was roaming around in different cities, pretending to be an IAS officer and living a life of luxury.
Lalit Kishore was one of five sons of the late Chalitar Ram and Jahari Devi. His brothers — Rajkumar, Hari Kishore, Rajkishore and Rajnandan — stayed back in the village and continued working as labourers. Lalit, however, cut himself off from the family. Locals say he stopped visiting home after 2017. He returned only once, for his father’s last rites, and left the very next day. He reportedly felt ashamed of his poor home and did not want to be associated with it. Ironically, while his family struggled for survival, Lalit changed his name to Gaurav Kumar Singh and began presenting himself as a powerful government officer.
His journey into fraud began in Banka in 2017. Lalit started a coaching centre called Aditya-50, where he taught poor students, sometimes charging just Rs 30 and often teaching for free. This created an image of a helpful and socially minded person. He slowly built contacts in the education department and managed to get official-looking letters in the name of free coaching programmes. Using these letters, he even conducted entrance tests in government schools, which further strengthened people’s trust in him.
Once people began to believe in him, Lalit showed his true intentions. He started demanding money by promising government jobs, B.Ed admissions and seats in different courses. According to reports, he cheated dozens of people and collected more than Rs 2 crore. On May 1, 2023, he suddenly fled Banka overnight. Even his close associates were not spared. He allegedly cheated his landlord of Rs 10 lakh and took Rs 2 lakh from a local computer shop owner before disappearing.
To maintain his fake identity, Lalit spent lavishly. He travelled in a white Innova with a red-and-blue beacon light and kept a private team of 10 to 15 people, including drivers, guards and stenographers. Police also say he lived a reckless personal life and had relationships with several women. In the past, he had even eloped with a woman and married her at the Janaki Temple in Sitamarhi, an incident that led to a police case.
Investigators now believe that Lalit did not act alone. His brother-in-law, Abhishek Kumar, a software engineer, is accused of helping him create fake documents, IDs and nameplates. With the help of technology and AI tools, they allegedly produced forged newspaper reports and government papers to make the fake IAS image look real. What began as a small coaching centre for poor children eventually turned into a large-scale fraud, leaving behind broken trust, cheated victims and a family that remains trapped in poverty.
