AHMEDABAD, July 3 (PTI): The Gujarat government on Tuesday reinstated senior IAS officer Gaurav Dahiya, who was suspended in 2019 after facing allegations of bigamy and cheating made by a Delhi-based woman.
In a notification, the general administration department said the state government has revoked the suspension of the 2010-batch IAS officer Dahiya and appointed him as the additional development commissioner at Gandhinagar, relieving AB Rathod who held additional charge of the post.
Dahiya was suspended in August 2019 for misconduct and moral turpitude after a Delhi-based woman claimed that he had married her in February 2018 while keeping her in the dark about his first marriage and wife and later tortured and blackmailed her with intimate photos.
Dahiya alleged that the woman “honey trapped” him and started blackmailing him. He also claimed the woman morphed photos of their alleged wedding to get money from him.
The government had formed an inquiry committee, headed by principal secretary Sunaina Tomar, to probe the woman’s allegations of bigamy and cheating against the Gujarat-cadre officer.
The Gandhinagar police also conducted a separate inquiry after receiving an application from the woman.
The woman claimed that Dahiya had married her in February 2018 at Tirupati while keeping her in the dark about his first marriage and wife. She alleged in an application that he lied to her that he will soon divorce his wife.
She also claimed to have photographs and videos of the wedding.
“When I insisted on getting our marriage registered, he started torturing me and even blackmailed me by showing some intimate photos,” she alleged in her application.
Dahiya in his application had refuted the claims.
The bureaucrat told the police that though they had arrived at a compromise earlier, the woman started harassing him with false claims of marriage.
Dahiya was transferred to the general administration department as a joint secretary on July 22, 2019 after the police received the complaint against him. Before that, he was the director of the National Rural Health Mission in Gujarat.
