For years, Vijay Gupta rubbed shoulders with Jammu and Kashmir’s political and administrative elite.

As the founder-editor of a local English daily, the 49-year-old was often spotted in the Civil Secretariat, meeting a minister or ensconced in a senior bureaucrat’s office, according to people familiar with his movements there.

“Such was his clout,” a senior official claimed, “that he was provided personal security officers… his driver used to drive him in his private vehicle right inside the Civil Secretariat, even when the Assembly was in session.”

Vijay Gupta’s father helped him start a small transformer assembly business from a room in their two-storey house in Jammu’s Sarwal area.

It was this proximity that Vijay would later use to allegedly project an influence he did not have.

On May 20, he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Delhi for posing as an influential official in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and cheating people of over Rs 4 crore on the pretext of “getting their work done”.

To “create an image” that he was a “high-ranking” government official, officials claimed Vijay undertook 26 foreign trips between 2016 and 2026 many of them coinciding with the Prime Minister’s overseas visits.

Vijay also allegedly circulated pictures of himself with senior government officials, the ED said.

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The probe agency booked him on charges of money laundering based on an FIR lodged by the Delhi Police. Its investigation centres on cash deposits totalling Rs 4.06 crore in Vijay’s bank accounts, which the agency has alleged are proceeds of crime under the anti-money laundering law.

In July, a Delhi court rejected Vijay’s bail. Additional Sessions Judge Dhirendra Rana of the Patiala House Court said: “… the accused used false credentials, foreign visits, photographs with public officials to impersonate… a senior officer of PMO to get illegal monetary advantage from victims.”

It added: “The accused has failed to satisfy the twin conditions of Section 45 of the Act (PMLA) and no ground is made out to release [him] on regular bail.”

Building a ‘persona’

Vijay’s photographs with senior officials appear to have been an important part of the persona he projected.

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On New Year’s Eve in 2019, a photo appeared on his Facebook page showing him and his family — his engineer wife and two children — with a senior Army officer, congratulating him on his new appointment.

Vijay Gupta had put up boards of CHARDIKALA TIME TV, SADHNA NEWS and ARYAN Publication House outside his Sarwal Colony home

His newspaper’s April 20, 2018, edition carried a photograph of Vijay shaking hands with a senior government official during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London.

But Vijay’s story began far from the corridors of power.

He is the younger of two sons of Subash Chander Gupta, a retired BSNL employee. He didn’t finish school.

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His father helped him start a small transformer assembly business from a room in their two-storey house in Jammu’s Sarwal area. Three years later, Vijay switched to selling locally manufactured batteries.

People who knew him said he used to be introverted as a child especially after his mother died when he was in Class 8. His father, they said, was strict about discipline at home.

But after starting the transformer business, people who knew Vijay claimed he began borrowing small amounts from friends and often did not repay them.

Soon, people began turning up at his home to recover their money. Some filed complaints, neighbours claimed, adding that in some cases, Vijay was even beaten by them.

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To ward off pressure, in 2007, he started publishing a weekly newspaper called Young Bites. Soon the newspaper started getting advertisements and he converted it into an English daily in 2013.

A former staff member said Vijay would get a few hundred copies of the daily printed by a private publication house.

Newspaper opened doors

This gave him an entry into political circles: Vijay allegedly began meeting senior ministers during the PDP-Congress and NC-Congress coalition governments between 2002-08 and 2008-2014.

With one Cabinet minister, the familiarity went so far that Vijay addressed him as ‘Daddy’, sources said. He was often seen sitting with the minister’s personal staff at his office and residence.

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This minister, who lost the 2014 Assembly election, confirmed that Vijay addressed him as ‘Baap’ and approached him as a media person, but said he always maintained a distance from him.

Vijay also had unrestricted access to senior bureaucrats’ offices, the former minister claimed.

Over time, he also cultivated ties with senior Army and police officers and members of the ruling party, claimed people who knew him, adding that he also expanded his operations among bureaucratic and political circles in Delhi.

“He was a frequent visitor to senior Army officers in J&K and Delhi, and shared such cordial relations with them that several officers would accompany him to his vehicle to see him off after their meetings,” claimed an old friend of Vijay.

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As his political and official contacts grew, so did the lifestyle Vijay projected.

He started out with a scooter and soon bought a Tata Indica. Later, he began wearing branded clothes and expensive footwear, and allegedly bought electronic items, groceries and even gold jewellery on credit or through cheques that people were unable to encash.

He had put up boards of CHARDIKALA TIME TV, SADHNA NEWS and ARYAN Publication House outside his Sarwal Colony home, claiming he was the director of these news channels, said locals.

By the time he was arrested, people who knew him said he owned nearly half a dozen cars, including a Mercedes and an Endeavour, in Jammu and Delhi.

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Officials said he also owned properties in the two cities, including one in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar.

Trail of debts

As pressure to repay money mounted, Vijay moved to Delhi with his family in 2021, said people close to him. He continued publishing his newspaper from Jammu and ran a digital news site.

Officials said among those he allegedly cheated were a friend from his school days and a sanitary shop owner whose Rs 14,900 bill he is yet to clear.

But people who had known Vijay since his childhood alleged that he has a long list of victims in Jammu and Kashmir — and did not even spare his friends.

One of his childhood friends said Vijay used to invite them over for high tea or lunch only to show off his achievements.

Another friend claimed Vijay took away the bangles of a friend’s wife on the pretext of showing the design to a jeweller and getting a similar pair made for his own wife. Instead, he allegedly mortgaged them to raise money.

Those close to him said he was facing multiple cheque-bounce complaints in J&K.

Officers at Sarwal Police Post said they continued to receive warrants from courts from time to time. One such warrant sought his appearance on August 27.

His newspaper’s publication has now been suspended.

—–EOM—-