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.
The general administration department said in a statement that the state government had lifted the suspension of Dahiya, a 2010-batch IAS officer. It appointed him as the Additional Development Commissioner in Gandhinagar, replacing AB Rathod, who held additional charge of the post.
Dahiya was suspended in August 2019 for misbehaviour and moral turpitude after a Delhi-based lady alleged he married her in February 2018 while concealing his first marriage and wife, and later tormented and blackmailed her with intimate images.
Dahiya said the woman “honey trapped” him and began blackmailing him. He also claimed she manipulated images of their fake wedding in order to extort 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 on February 2018 in 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 would 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.
