Gurugram: It all started with a right swipe. Vikas’ expectations of a promising series of dates turned into a horror story that he is yet to recover from. It is no different from the Netflix series Tinder Swindler, except this one is on Bumble, right here in Gurugram, and involves a con woman.
The Gurugram police have arrested a 32-year-old woman from Chawri Bazar who cheated and robbed ten men, after meeting them on Bumble app and going on fancy dates. She made as much as Rs 1 crore over three months this year, the police said. They are calling it the ‘Bumble scam’.
Vikas’ experience was enough to frighten him off all dating apps. He has quit alcohol and stopped going to restaurants too. In public spaces, he maintains a distance from women. A message from an unknown woman on social media now startles him.
“I will never use a dating app. Never ever. And never consume anything from outside,” says Vikas, rubbing his hand nervously while sitting in a Barista cafe in Gurugram. At 30, he works with a business development cell of an IT firm, but he no longer meets women without his parents. They have accompanied him to the cafe as well.
Vikas switched to Bumble dating app just six months ago, after failing to find a suitable match on Shaadi.com. Surbhi Gupta was the second woman he met, and she was different, Vikas recalls.
“Surbhi would often pay the bill. It felt [like] she was not looking for money but a genuine relationship.” After a series of dates, they decided to get more intimate.
She booked a hotel room in Gurugram, and Vikas joined her with cans of beer. Pizza was ordered. It was going to be a fun evening until the food arrived. Vikas stepped out to collect the pizzas when Surbhi spiked his drink with a sleeping pill—at least that is what the police suspect happened.
Gurugram has been in a tizzy since Surbhi’s arrest. The men are making several rounds to the police. Hiring lawyers. Quitting alcohol. Abandoning dating apps. One has even embraced sanatan dharma. The woman is behind the bars, but the men are yet to recover from their date from hell. Perhaps for the first time in their lives, they are experiencing vulnerability.
Now, Vikas tells everyone about his online dating experience—his office colleagues, friends, as well as strangers in malls and metro trains.
She was puffing on a cigarette, sitting casually on the floor when she told us she wanted revenge, that all the men she looted were deceiving their partners.
Her one big regret was that she had to abort her child.
Surbhi has upended stereotypes, leaving even the Gurugram police bemused. They’ve heard of Haryana’s loot and scoot brides, but a woman pulling off a con like this is new to them. Others are familiar with cases of women being cheated or abused by men.
On the face of it, Surbhi does not fit the bill. She graduated from Delhi University, studied in London, and returned to India where she got an HR job at a monthly salary of over Rs 1 lakh.
“What was the need? I still can’t understand it,” says Sandeep Kumar, investigating officer, Sector 29 police station, Gurugram. She was in police custody for ten days where she allegedly confessed to cheating multiple men. Bumble was her hunting ground.
“She followed the same modus operandi with everyone. Met men through the dating app, gained their trust, spiked their drinks, and stole their cash, cards and phones,” says Kumar.
It began after a bad break-up and an abortion. “Perhaps she wanted to take revenge by looting men,” Kumar wonders.
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British accent, sleeping pills, iPhones
The grainy CCTV footage shows Surbhi gently closing the door behind her as she exits the hotel room on 2 August. Her white kurta, black trousers, a nondescript backpack, and a sling bag aren’t calling for attention. She glances around before making her way to the lift.
Back in the room, Vikas is lying unconscious, his iPhone, two ATM cards and Rs 5,000 cash now in Surbhi’s possession. He would wake up several hours later to find out what had happened. “This is how she looted men by meeting them privately and spiking their drinks,” the police said.
The men that Surbhi duped had one thing in common – iPhones. A man with an iPhone was enough for her to conclude that he was well off.
For Vikas, trust began with her British accent. That was enough to convince him of her good intentions. It signalled to him that she wasn’t poor or uneducated. But with Vikas, Surbhi had gone an extra mile. Initially, he was reluctant to meet her in any setting where they would be alone. So, for one month, they dated. They went to restaurants, on long drives, before finally deciding to meet in a hotel room.
His last message to Surbhi on WhatsApp read: “I trusted you and you cheated me.”
Apart from using aliases on Bumble—Surbhi wasn’t big on hiding her tracks. And so, the police were able to track her cell phone—an iPhone 14 Pro.
Surbhi then moved to her next target, 31-year-old Tarun*, a wealthy software developer who owned a 3BHK flat in DLF Phase 4 and drove a BMW. On a leisurely Saturday, he swiped right out of boredom. It was a hook-up date; Tarun was to get married in a few months. They met at a restaurant in Sector 47 the next day, 1 October, and shared a few beers before she went to his house.
According to the police, Surbhi asked for more ice cubes and when he went to the kitchen, she allegedly mixed a few sleeping tablets into his drink. She stole 10 debit cards, two credit cards, an iPhone 14 Pro, and Rs 10,000 in cash. She also withdrew Rs 2.78 lakh from his bank accounts. A key part of her modus operandi was to get the men drunk and make them order food, and then watch them enter the ATM PIN.
Tarun woke up three days later after his cook shook him awake. He searched for his phone but couldn’t find it anywhere. It didn’t take him long to realise he had been duped.
Days later, on 10 October, when he realised how much she had stolen, Tarun finally went to the police. “The effect of the drug was such that I woke up three days later. I can still feel the laziness and stiffness in my body,” he said in his complaint.
Like Vikas, Tarun has sworn off dating apps. He has stopped drinking alcohol or consuming meat, and has turned to religion.
“I have renounced pleasure. I have left everything,” he says.
His parents in Bhopal read about the incident in the newspaper, and have been keeping tabs on him since then. He now has to share his live location with his mother, who tracks his movements.
“My parents are frightened,” he says.
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Police investigation
An FIR in Tarun’s case was registered on 10 October at the Sector 29 police station, more than a month after the Sector 50 police’s FIR on Vikas’s complaint. The latter’s investigation, however, had hit a wall.
But the police grapevine was humming with news of a ‘rich’ woman cheating men on Bumble. Sector 29 officer Sandeep Kumar was intrigued. He suspected a connection between the two cases.
Apart from using aliases on Bumble—Surbhi wasn’t big on hiding her tracks. And so, the police were able to track her cell phone—an iPhone 14 Pro—based on the number she had shared with the men. Within three days, Kumar’s team cracked the case.
The men that Surbhi duped had one thing in common – iPhones. It was enough for her to conclude that the man was well off. For Vikas, trust began with her British accent. It signalled to him that she held good intentions, and wasn’t poor or uneducated.
Surbhi was sleeping when the team barged into her house in Chawri Bazar and arrested her on 13 October. “We took the CCTV footage from DLF Phase 4 society and the hotel. Took help from cyber police to trace her. It took us two days to find her,” said Kumar.
The media jumped on the story, and headlines like ‘London MBA grad dupes 10 men in Delhi-NCR’ got everyone talking. That’s when more men approached the police.
Bumble has since cancelled Surbhi’s account.
“Any profile that violates our terms or guidelines may result in getting blocked from the app. We have additional features to prevent users from any kind of scam,” said Bumble communications director, Samarpita Samaddar, referring to the app’s photo verification, video chat, and voice call features. “We strive to keep our users safe.”
But Surbhi was out in plain sight. In total, the police have received complaints from 10 men across Delhi-NCR (including Vikas and Tarun) and are expecting more in the coming days. For now, Surbhi has been booked under Sections 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) and 380 (theft in dwelling house) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
“All this happened in two months. She pulled off such a big con,” said Kumar, the investigating officer.
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An act of revenge?
Police personnel described Surbhi as calm and cheerful while she was in the lock-up.
She needed cigarettes to keep calm, recalls a police officer, who did not want to be named. “She was puffing on a cigarette, sitting casually on the floor when she told us she wanted revenge, that all the men she looted were deceiving their partners,” he recalled. “Her one big regret was that she had to abort her child.”
If the police’s theory is correct, then Surbhi’s life story is straight out of a Bollywood’s dramatisation of a woman fuelled by vengeance.
“Two years ago, she dated a man. She spent a lot of money [on him] to ensure he is happy. She was five months pregnant and wanted to marry him but he physically assaulted her and left,” said Sapna, a constable who was overseeing the lock-up where Surbhi was kept.
Vikas remembers cuts on her arms and her story really well. In their first meet-up, they had discussed their lives.
“She told me the same story. And she was visibly heartbroken by that,” recalled Vikas.
Surbhi was adopted by her aunt, days after she was born. Her biological parents live in Gurugram. All her life, she addressed her aunt as ‘Maa’.
On returning to India, she moved back with her aunt who lives on the first floor of a house in the middle of the bustling Chawri Bazar market with its maze of roads and shops. Her family declined to speak to ThePrint, but her lawyer Amit Bhardwaj says the case is “based on false assumptions.” He claims that Tarun tried to “force himself on her” and she refused.
“And then Tarun drank so much that he slept and she left. Now, the man is accusing her,” said Bhardwaj, who has moved the bail application to the sessions court, which will hear her application today (7 November). “They have no medical certificate to prove that she spiked the drink. There is no evidence,” said Bhardwaj.
Like Vikas, Tarun has sworn off dating apps. He has stopped drinking alcohol or consuming meat and has turned to religion. “I have renounced pleasure. I have left everything,” he says.
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Gurugram talk: Women swindling men
In Gurugram, Vikas and Tarun are planning to meet soon. They want to help each other “recover from the trauma of online dating”.
“She had cuts on her arm, right?” Vikas asks Tarun who is on the other side of the call.
“Did she also spike your drink? For how long were you unconscious?” the conversation unfolds.
Vikas is convinced that there are more women like Surbhi, and is trying to reach out to men who might have been duped in a similar manner. Most men don’t want to approach the police, but find support on Reddit.
In August, when Vikas was meeting Surbhi, another 24-year-old man in Gurugram claimed that he was robbed by a woman he had met on a dating app.
“I got a little too excited. She asked me to meet near Huda metro station,” he wrote on the Reddit thread.
But after meeting her, he got suspicious as her voice did not match the one he had heard on the phone. “I proposed visiting a cafe but she said we can go to a hotel or my place. She said she charges Rs 6,000 bucks for one shot,” he wrote, adding that he gave her the money to get her to leave. But there is no police case.
Back at the Sector 29 police station, investigating officer Sandeep Kumar has become a local hero among constables and inspectors for cracking the “Bumble scam” within three days. He says he still receives calls from men claiming to have been cheated by Surbhi.
“One is from Noida, another from Delhi, and third from Haryana,” he says.
But he can’t stop thinking about the HR woman with an MBA from the UK who had an iPhone and all the trapping of wealth.
“Easy money is one thing but I still don’t understand what her intention was. Revenge on men? For deceiving and assaulting women?” he murmurs and shakes his head in confusion.
(Edited by Prashant)