New Delhi, Jan. 3: Meet Surendra Singh, a retired IAS officer who’s spending his retirement years reading and making sense of how his juniors are running the country.

Now, get ready to welcome Surendra Singh — believed to be an IAS officer too — who’s prowling the corridors of Doordarshan supposedly seeking a good voiceover for a documentary film he claims he’s making.

If you are confused, Delhi police are with you and for you, always. And in this riddle, they appear as bewildered as you might be.

Surendra Singh, the first and the real one, was a cabinet secretary between 1994 and 1996. Last month, he filed a police complaint that “someone might be impersonating him”.

It all began two months ago at the Doordarshan headquarters. Akash Laxman, the director of administration (DD News), was told by the reception desk at his office that a “former cabinet secretary wanted to see him”. He identified himself as Surendra Singh.

According to Laxman, he offered the elderly visitor courtesy, and a cup of tea. Then came the request: the man wanted Laxman to put him in touch with news-readers who could provide the “voiceover” for his “documentary film”.

Laxman said he called “three to four” part-time anchors and introduced them to the “former cabinet secretary”. But one of the lady anchors later told Laxman that she suspected Surendra Singh wasn’t the person he was claiming to be.

Running a quick check, Laxman contacted the cabinet secretariat and got the telephone number of the former cabinet secretary — the real one.

Over the phone, the former bureaucrat told Laxman that he’d never been to Doordarshan’s offices, though he said he’d heard from other sources that he was “being impersonated”. It’s not known why he waited for Laxman’s call to file a police complaint despite hearing about a fake.

Laxman wrote to the retired officer on December 8, telling him, formally, that “someone might be impersonating him”. After this, Singh reportedly sent his complaint to Delhi police commissioner K.K. Paul, who, in turn, asked deputy commissioner (vigilance) Shalini Singh to probe the matter.

Singh confirmed receiving the complaint, but said her department will “inquire” into, not “investigate”, the matter. “We will decide what to do about it,” is all she said.

One story going around in Doordarshan circles is that the alleged imposter misbehaved with at least one of the part-time anchors but Laxman denied it. The anchors made no such charge against the imposter when they were quizzed by police officers in Laxman’s presence.

It is not known if the other Surendra Singh — Surendra Kumar Singh, to be precise — is a retired IAS officer. Nor could he be contacted for his version of the story.