A Special CBI Court in Panchkula has denied regular bail to senior IAS officer Pankaj Agarwal, ruling that the ongoing investigation into an alleged multi-crore banking scam involving Haryana government accounts does not yet justify his release. Court records and CBI submissions place the overall scam at approximately ₹657 crore, a figure higher than what has appeared in some earlier reporting, with the agency alleging losses of ₹504 crore to the Haryana government and a further ₹153 crore to the Chandigarh Administration. Agarwal, a 2000-batch IAS officer who most recently held charge as Principal Secretary in the School Education and Agriculture departments, has remained in judicial custody since his arrest on June 22.
An Administrative Signature the CBI Says Was Anything But Routine
At the heart of the bail hearing was a fundamental disagreement over how to characterise Agarwal’s involvement. His defence argued that he had done nothing more than grant administrative approval for shifting government department accounts between banks, a decision it described as a routine procedural matter carrying no personal financial benefit and no direct evidence of criminal intent.
The CBI rejected that framing outright. According to the agency, Agarwal’s approval enabled government accounts to be opened at a private bank in violation of Haryana Finance Department guidelines, a violation the CBI says directly facilitated the diversion of public funds into accounts later used for suspicious transactions. Investigators told the court that Agarwal’s role had surfaced on two separate occasions across two different departments under his charge, a pattern the agency argued undermined any claim that his involvement was incidental or one-off.
A Documented Chain of Events Investigators Say Points Beyond Negligence
The CBI’s opposition to bail laid out a specific timeline it says establishes more than administrative oversight. Investigators told the court that a proposal to open an account for the Haryana State Agriculture Marketing Board, previously left unprocessed, was revived only after Agarwal’s direct intervention in July 2025 and processed the same day, despite the board already operating multiple bank accounts and office records showing no clear justification for the new one beyond a reference to a marginally higher interest rate offered by the private bank.
Months later, in January 2026, the CBI alleges ₹10 crore was fraudulently withdrawn from that very account using a cancelled cheque made out to two private entities. The agency has separately told the court it possesses evidence of prior communication between Agarwal and Ribhav Rishi, described by investigators as the scam’s mastermind, and has alleged that Agarwal functioned as a close associate of Rishi’s, allegedly receiving monetary and what the CBI termed “unethical” benefits from him, an allegation the defence disputes and which remains subject to ongoing investigation rather than established fact.
Court Cites Live Investigation in Rejecting Bail
Weighing both sides, the Special CBI Court concluded that the investigation remains actively in progress and that the material currently on record does not support granting bail at this stage. The CBI had specifically argued that releasing Agarwal now could compromise the collection of further evidence and the examination of witnesses, a concern the court appears to have found persuasive given the continuing scrutiny of financial transactions, banking records and the roles of other individuals connected to the case.
The broader investigation has already produced a chargesheet against 17 accused, including six bank officials, three government officials, two companies and six private individuals, according to CBI officials, with funds from eight Haryana government departments allegedly diverted through shell entities as part of the wider scheme. Agarwal was formally suspended by the Haryana government days after his arrest, a step mandated under service rules once a government officer remains in custody beyond 48 hours, and he had already been stripped of his substantive departmental assignments and posted to a comparatively peripheral role once the CBI took over the investigation earlier this year.
With the bail plea now dismissed, the matter returns to the Special CBI Court for continued proceedings, where investigators say they will keep examining financial records, banking documents and electronic evidence as the probe into how government funds moved through a private bank’s accounts continues to widen.
