New Delhi: For this 39-year-old government officer posted in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, there could not have been a better choice than Rahul Chaturvedi. His profile on a matrimonial website was eye-catching—Chaturvedi claimed to have graduated from the IIM, Bengaluru, and posted that he drew a handsome salary from tech giant Wipro.
But, something was amiss. The ‘vice-president of Wipro’s HR department’ borrowed money on several occasions, the amount of which ran into Rs 2.27 lakh. She had enough of it and approached the police on 7 September after Chaturvedi reached out to her younger brother for money.
Later, she learnt from the police that Chaturvedi’s salary slip and other documents were all forged. The man from Uttar Pradesh had made profiles on matrimonial platforms such as Betterhalf and Jeevansathi to defraud at least 16 more women on the pretext of marriage.
Data retrieved from Chaturvedi’s phone blew the lid off his clandestine activities targeting several women whom he met through matrimonial sites, the police said, adding that the frauds ran into Rs 15 lakh.
On Tuesday, the Gautam Buddh Nagar police arrested Chaturvedi, 39, from a rented house in Noida as part of its probe into a case filed by the government officer at the Bisrakh police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district on 7 September.
Chaturvedi has been slapped with Section 316(2) (criminal breach of trust), 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 351(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
The IIM-Bangalore has come out with a post on social media platform ‘X’ on Thursday night, saying that it has “no record of such an individual being our alumnus”.
Media reports have captioned one Mr. Rahul Chaturvedi, recently arrested by Noida Police on charges of alleged fraud, as an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB). We have no record of such an individual being our alumnus.
(1/2)#IIMB #IIMBStatement
— IIM Bangalore (@iimb_official) September 26, 2024
‘Polished, patient persona’
A major reason behind Chaturvedi’s success, police officers said, was to do with his selection of targets—working women aged more than 35 years who were looking to marry and “settle in life”. Moreover, he had calculated that even if he was found cheating, his victims would remain quiet because of the “shame” of falling into his trap.
To begin with, Chaturvedi never showed any sign of desperation to settle down like his victims. “He had to look polished, savvy and not impatient considering what he wanted to portray himself as. For the first 15-20 days he did not use to seek numbers of the victims and rather continued to chat on matrimonial platforms only,” a police officer told ThePrint.
In the next step, he would connect with his targets on WhatsApp and gradually go on to meet their parents and family members to lure them into believing that he was open to sharing his personal details to gain more trust.
“He also modulated his voice to impersonate his father and other family members to establish his background of a well-mannered and polished family,” another police officer said. This, the officer said, he had to do because he had been “disowned” by the family.
Born to parents who served in the Army and from Lucknow, Chaturvedi has separated from his wife whom he married in 2021, the police said. Investigators suspect that the separation happened after the wife, who is also a working woman, got an idea about his background.
Chaturvedi told his interrogators that he had joined telecom major Airtel in 2012 before joining Wipro in 2018. What aided his fraudulent activities, according to the police, was that there was a high ranked executive working with Wipro with the same name.
“He worked with a belief that even if his supposed targets would do a background check, they would find a highly-placed employee with his name in Wipro. This gave him enormous confidence to continue with his plan,” a police officer said.
It was during the probe being carried out in the government officer’s case that the police found there was another similar case against the conman in Noida.
In the above-mentioned case, the FIR mentions that Chaturvedi swindled Rs 2.27 lakh from her between June and August. She has detailed transactions of Rs 1 lakh and 27,000 on 17 June while he also borrowed Rs 30,000 from her on pretext of his father’s illness on 6 July. The transactions also included shopping for shoes worth Rs 16,000.
On her demand to return money, the FIR says, Chaturvedi allegedly abused and threatened her.
Based on the address and copy of Aadhaar provided by the government officer, Central Noida Police arrested Chaturvedi from his rented house, which he had claimed to be its owner to several of his targets.
The police further said that he purchased high-end mobile phones whose bills were paid for by his victims. These mobiles were then sold on online platforms such as Cashify to make money quickly, they added.
Police officers aware of the investigation told ThePrint that the victims were being counselled to become prosecution witnesses against Chaturvedi to bring him to justice.
Meanwhile, the police advised subscribers of various social media platforms to remain on guard to avoid such fraud cases.Verification of identity documents such as Aadhaar, voter card and passport will at least solve the problem of basic level frauds, they said.
In this regard, the Delhi Police’s Crime Branch higlighted a similar case that it had cracked a few days before. Mukeem Ayyub Khan from UP’s Pratapgarh was arrested for allegedly posing as a senior government official to defraud as many as 50 women from across the country.
The police found that Khan made several fake IDs on these platforms claiming to be a senior government official, who was going through personal struggles due to the death of his wife.
His targets, according to the police, were affluent middle-aged divorcees, unmarried and widow Muslim women. Once these women were convinced of his story, Khan used to meet their families to fix marriages after which he used to dupe them in the name of booking resorts, marriage halls or hotels for the marriage, they said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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