Chhattisgarh: For 3 years, cops ‘inflated’ salaries. Then AI spotted it

Investigators claim Rai, who was responsible for processing salary bills, allegedly edited the soft copies of salary records before they were processed, fraudulently increasing the salaries of himself and the two other constables. The trio allegedly siphoned off between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 2 crore between October 2023 and May 2026.

“The fraud went undetected because police salary expenditure fluctuates frequently due to regular transfers, postings and changes in personnel strength,” one officer said. “The accused allegedly inflated salaries by small amounts each month in their own names and those of the other two constables, allowing the fraud to remain unnoticed for years.”

It was when auditors used AI to analyse salary data for around 2,000 personnel that the anomalies were first noticed, investigators said.

“The data related to salaries was voluminous and so auditors proactively decided to use AI tools,” Bastar SP Shalabh Kumar Sinha said.

Asked why it had gone unnoticed before, investigators said the scale of the data had made it harder to detect the anomalies.

All three have been booked for cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of government funds under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). They were produced before a court and remanded to 14 days of judicial custody.