The CBI on Thursday arrested suspended IAS officer Ram Kumar Singh in the Rs 657-crore bank scam.The scam involved officials of IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, who allegedly colluded with government officials, including IAS officers, to siphon off funds from the bank accounts of eight Haryana government departments and two Chandigarh Administration departments.While the CBI has put the quantum of loss at Rs 657 crore, the ED, which is also investigating the scam, claims a loss of Rs 645 crore.Ram Kumar Singh is a 2012-batch IAS officer. He was promoted to the IAS from the Haryana Civil Services. After his name cropped up in the scam, the Haryana Government suspended him on April 8, along with another IAS officer, Pardeep Kumar of the 2011 batch, who was also allegedly involved.Ram Kumar Singh served as the Commissioner, Municipal Corporation, Panchkula, from October 26, 2020, to May 12, 2021, and then again from July 10, 2025, to January 28, 2026. According to the CBI, in the Panchkula MC case, Rs 79.46 crore was siphoned off from the IDFC First Bank account in Sector 32, Chandigarh.The CBI said the Panchkula MC’s account in the IDFC First Bank was opened in violation of the extant guidelines of the Haryana Government’s Finance Department. “The particulars recorded in the account opening form were entered in a manner designed to conceal the fraudulent transactions intended to be carried out subsequently. Pursuant to an understanding with the accused officials of IDFC First Bank, Ram Kumar Singh, Commissioner, MC, Panchkula, handed over multiple signed cheques to bank officials through middlemen under the garb of opening fixed deposits. The funds were debited using these cheques, and no fixed deposits were ever created. The debited amounts were diverted to shell entities controlled and operated by the accused bank officials,” claimed the CBI.The residences of RK Singh in Chandigarh and Karnal were searched and several incriminating documents recovered, the CBI claimed.The agency added that “the misappropriation was carried out with the knowledge and active participation of the then Commissioner and senior accountant of the Panchkula MC.” Earlier, the CBI had arrested the senior accountant, Surinder Jain, in the case.As per the CBI, the fraud at the Panchkula MC formed part of a larger scam at the IDFC First Bank branch, in which funds amounting to Rs 504 crore from eight Haryana Government departments were siphoned off through forged or non-existent fixed deposits or debit notes and routed to shell entities.Besides Ram Kumar Singh and Pardeep Kumar, the Haryana Government had earlier granted permission to investigate the role of six more IAS officers in the scam — Mohd Shayin, Pankaj Agarwal, DK Behera, Mani Ram Sharma, Vineet Garg and Saket Kumar — under Section 17 A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Among these IAS officers, the premises of Shayin, Agarwal and Pardeep Kumar were raided on June 6.So far, 15 persons and three shell entities have been chargesheeted in the case related to the Haryana Government accounts before a Panchkula court. The chargesheet against the IAS officers is yet to be submitted.Besides, the CBI is investigating two more cases: one pertaining to the siphoning off funds from the bank account of Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) and another pertaining to misappropriation from the account of Chandigarh Renewable Energy and Science & Technology Promotion Society (CREST). The CBI claims that the quantum of fraud in these two cases is Rs 153 crore.In the CSCL case, the CBI has chargesheeted five bankers, a CSCL official and a private person. In the CREST case, the agency has submitted a chargesheet against five bankers, two CREST officials, four private persons and two firms. Further, one senior Indian Forest Service officer, Navneet Srivastava, was earlier arrested in the CREST case.