Haryana judge fell for a Tinder scam. Lost Rs 52 lakh

The judicial officer matched with a man, who claimed to be employed in a covert government role, on Tinder. He persuaded her to invest with him on the promise of high returns.

The Tinder app icon | Sara Hylton | Bloomberg

New Delhi: A Haryana judicial officer was allegedly swindled of more than Rs 52 lakh in a suspected honeytrap scam after she connected with a man on Tinder who claimed to work for a “secret government department”, according to a recent order by the Patiala House Court.

The case has taken an unusual turn, as it was revealed that the FIR was not filed by the judge herself but by her domestic worker, Diksha Devi, who told police she had been defrauded through the dating app.

While dismissing the bail plea of the accused Deepak Vats, Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Partap Singh Laler made pointed observations about the gap between the complaint on record and the financial trail uncovered during the probe.

According to the complaint, the judicial officer matched with the accused on Tinder in November 2025. Vats introduced himself as “Abhimanyu Vashishth” and claimed to be employed in a covert government role.

Over the following weeks, the two grew close, and the accused allegedly persuaded the judge to invest money with him on the promise of high returns. She is said to have transferred more than Rs 52.81 lakh to bank accounts linked to him. Over time, when the promised profits failed to materialise, she realised she had been defrauded.

Vats was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell in February this year and has been in judicial custody since. After a trial court rejected his bail application, he moved the sessions court seeking relief.

‘Hide and seek’

In its order, the court noted that the FIR named Devi as the complainant, but the money trail told a different story. The court observed that Devi “did not initiate or make a single digital payment throughout the entire period”. Nearly all the disputed transactions, barring a final cash deposit of Rs 5 lakh, were traced directly to the judicial officer’s own bank accounts, identifying her as the actual victim in the case.

The judge presiding over the bail plea remarked that the complaint did not appear to identify the real victim, and noted that a serving judicial officer had chosen to approach the criminal justice system indirectly rather than file the complaint in her own name. While acknowledging that victims of romance scams often face embarrassment and stigma, the court said such concerns could not come at the cost of a transparent and complete investigation.

The order also pointed to significant lapses in the probe so far. Investigators had neither retrieved the Tinder chat history between the judicial officer and the accused nor obtained the complete WhatsApp exchanges between the two. Call detail records had also not been collected.

The court further criticised the accused for what it called a “hide and seek” approach to the investigation, noting that he had selectively shared messages sent by the judicial officer while withholding his own replies, and had not granted access to his phone for examination.

Citing the incomplete state of the investigation and the absence of crucial digital evidence, the court declined to grant bail to Vats.

The sessions court has directed investigators to obtain the complete Tinder and WhatsApp records between the accused and the complainant, verify the claimed in-person meetings between the two, probe the network of entities through which the funds were routed, and expedite forensic analysis of the accused’s mobile phone.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)