Curious case of Jyoti Mishra: The ‘Phantom’ IFS officer

LUCKNOW: Suresh Narain Mishra is a sub-inspector with the UP Police. Two years ago, he was in seventh heaven when his eldest daughter, Jyoti, cracked the coveted civil services exam. While he was flooded with calls, his daughter was the toast of the media for being a small-town girl who climbed the Everest of all exams.
However, Mishra's world came crashing down when the Indian Embassy in Madrid, Spain, blew the lid off the world of falsehood and deceit his daughter had conjured.That she was not an IFS officer as they believed until Tuesday; that she was not working at the Indian embassy in Madrid; that she never cracked the civil services.
Close on the heels of the Puja Khedkar case in Pune, here is a girl from Rae Bareli, who scored 96% in class XII and did well in graduation with Delhi University, but faked her UPSC result as another girl by the same name had cleared the exam by cleverly concealing that the 'successful Jyoti' was of scheduled caste.
Jyoti Mishra confessed to TOI that there was no pressure from her parents to clear the civil services but did it after five from her peer group cracked the UPSC exam, but she couldn't in her first attempt. However, she ran out of luck when an X-user, pulling out June 2022 reports, claimed on Monday that despite being a Brahmin, she claimed SC quota.
This is when the fake Jyoti came out of the shell with the claim that she is an IFS officer and never availed the quota, and her lies got exposed. When TOI approached her father, now posted in Lucknow, to know his and his daughter's version, he confidently said that his daughter was posted with the Indian embassy in Madrid and could be approached after working hours (10 pm IST).
When TOI called up Jyoti Mishra through WhatsApp, she shared a screenshot of her X post in which she had repeated the claim. "I found many misleading pieces of information against me and my career. So wanted to clear it for once to each and every person who is intentionally or unintentionally targeting me. The post in which a name appears, Jyoti to be SC and IAS is not me.
She is IAS and she is from Haryana district. I am not IAS. I got IFS cadre and I was in another list," her post said. As proof of her claim, she shared documents meticulously collected by her to show her credentials -- a diplomatic passport, a letter from the UPSC about her selection and subsequent posting at Madrid, and an ID card of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy Of Administration (LBSNAA). After this, TOI carried a story about her mistaken identity and sent a query to the Indian embassy to confirm her claims.
On Tuesday, Aman Chandran, the second secretary handling press information and culture at the Embassy of India in Madrid, reverted to TOI's query on Jyoti Mishra and stated that there is no officer by her name working in this embassy. After this, when TOI dug deep to find out her whereabouts, it was revealed that she was in Delhi and admitted to her 'guilt' over a long conversation with a TOI reporter.
“The ghost from the past came back on Monday when a few social media users were targeting me by using my visuals, and an actual list of civil services examination 2021- service allocation in which Jyoti, an SC candidate, made it into IAS with 432 rank.
The social media users were peddling a false narrative that I, as a general category candidate, took reservation under the SC category to become IAS, which is untrue because I have never cleared any UPSC exam,” she told TOI. As per the copy of the fake second iteration PDF of the civil services examination 2021-service allocation list shared with TOI by her father, Suresh Narain Mishra, 432 rank is allotted to Jyoti Mishra under the general category with roll number 5904317.
In the actual list, 432 rank is allotted to Jyoti of the reserved SC category with roll number 843910. She could manage this 'roleplay' for two years only because Jyoti was duping just her parents and no one else. Mrs. and Mr. Mishra had no reason not to believe their daughter who did well academically.
Her visits to her parents were few and far between. She had last visited them 'from Madrid' one and a half months ago. In June 2022, when the UPSC results were declared, her 'achievement' was not only highlighted by the local media, but the UP Police also posted a congratulatory message for her and two other wards of cops. “I just couldn’t accept that afew of my peer group cleared the civil services, & I couldn’t.
I wanted to prove myself, but somehow my track got changed, and I couldn’t accept the failure and misled everyone into believing me that I’m an IFS,” said Jyoti (25). Her crestfallen father, meanwhile, had an incredulous look when TOI apprised him of his daughter's real status. “Till date, I believed that my daughter was an IFS officer attached to the Madridbased Indian embassy.
I don’t understand why she had to lie to us. We never pressured her for anything. She was good at academics. I don’t know where in the world she is currently living, but I want her to return home,” he told TOI.